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NOTES 



OF A 



THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 






BY 



JAMES MASON HOPPIN. 



•'Si forte quaeris aliquem locum altum, aliqueui locum sanctum, iutus exhibo to 
lemnlum Deo. In templo vis orare, in te ora.' 1 



NEW YORK: 
D . APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

346 & 348 BROADWAY. 
LONDON': 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 

M.DCCC.LIV. 




lUt-l^l^^ 







PS /?<? <? 

IS «T<f- 



Enteked according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

D. APPLET ON & CO., 

in the Clerk's Oflice of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 



TO 

MY PA THEE, 

WITH FILIAL VENERATION AND LOVE. 

JAMES MASON IIOPPIN. 



PKEFACE. 

The steps of Christianity commencing in the Old 
"World, we find there the scenes gloriously marked 
in the history of the Church ; but with a kind of 
holy jealousy might we not hope, that hereafter the 
Wittenbergs and Augsburgs would be in the New 
World, that among the real children of the Eeforma- 
tion, in this fresh land of mind, would lie the springs 
of yet nobler development in Christ's kingdom. 

The deep principle of that kingdom, Love, not 
yet fully known either in its perception from with- 
out or its energy from within, and especially as the 
source of energy, of fearless action, of practical, 
sublime conflict with error and all unrighteousness, 
would be the animating power, the heavenly fire of 
this new reformation. Its motto would be, " There 
is no fear in Love."* 

* 1 Jno. 4:18. 



PRE FACE. 



The pieces in this volume are gathered from 
previous publication in fugitive forms. They are 
drawn, with a single exception, from notes of ' Wan- 
der-years,' and yet of a period partially passed in 
quiet study in Germany. 



CONTENTS. 



The University of Frederic William . . . 11 

The Home of Luther 33 

Augsburg- 53 

The Country Church 65 

Schiller's Cottage 71 

The Hartz 81 

German Music 105 

Delphi 115 

Parnassus 129 

The Greek Ideal 139 

Athens 153 

The Religion of Islam 165 

Bethlehem 197 

NAZARETn ". 211 

Capernaum 221 

TnE Two Gardens 231 

The Study of the Bible 241 



%\t MamMi af itttexk MKi.iiK. 



THE 

UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 

The importance and splendor of Berlin are entirely of 
modern growth, yet as an existing city it is of consider- 
able antiquity. Learned men are even now contending 
as to the time of its foundation ; but all agree that until 
the period of the Great Elector, in the middle of the 
seventeenth century, the city had little political influence, 
and no scientific or intellectual lustre. Seated upon a 
little muddy, sluggish stream, in the midst of a vast bar- 
ren, or feebly planted plain, whose vegetation is not suffi- 
cient to fix the floating sand that in the stormy seasons 
rolls through the streets and openings of the city, it has 
no commercial advantages or natural beauties ; and added 
to this, an awkward, barbarous taste, until very recently, 
has ruled in its whole internal metropolitan economy. 
One writer says of it, that in the sixteenth century " it 
already had the Reformation and no side-walk." When 
Prussia became a kingdom in 1701, Berlin, its solemnly 
adopted capital, felt immediately the upswaying influence 



12 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

of this dignity, and rose rapidly in size and influence, un- 
der the careful, fostering hand of the first Frederic. 

But it was not until the ambition and genius of Fred- 
eric II. (the Great) had given to the kingdom of Prussia 
an acknowledged rank among the nations, that Berlin 
took its present position. Many of the public edifices 
which it now boasts, date from that period ; yet even then, 
a French style, synchronical with the Voltairean literature, 
neither seeking the grand nor useful, but showy, prevailed. 
Thus the two churches (not that churches were types of 
the period) standing upon the Gens d'Armes market-place 
are almost wholly tower and steeple, the bodies of the 
buildings being low, contracted, ill-shaped vestry-rooms, 
pinned upon the skirts of these empty and ostentatious 
campaniles. During the reigns of Frederic William II. 
and III., especially the latter, Berlin increased in monu- 
mental greatness, as well as in political importance. The 
architect Schinkel adorned the city with gigantic edifices, 
which, though still questionable in style, have a certain 
sort of respectable grandeur. 

But Berlin's greatness is intellectual ; and in this 
relation, no city on the globe shines with a more splendid 
light. It is the northern Mecca of scholars, its towers 
being the high fames of its Humboldts, Hegels, and Nean- 
ders. As centre of the most perfect system of education 
which the wisdom of man has invented, the heart of which 
is its university, as home of a host of great names in every 
department of science, as seat of many peculiar parent 
institutions of enlightened benevolence, as patron of the 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 13 

arts, it is a city, of which even thoughtful, learned Ger- 
many is proud. 

The University of Frederic William in Berlin was 
founded on the 10th October, 1810. It was especially 
the conception of Wilhelm von Humboldt, that man whose 
silent ideas, true or false, have germinated with so mighty 
a crop in the words and works of others. It was the 
conception of patriotism, to rear an influence that should 
assist in renovating Germany, impotently groaning under 
its load of moral degradation, that should build up its 
self-respect, and from its own slumbering mind draw forth 
the elements of national defence and true greatness. It 
has indeed partially answered this profound aim-, although 
it has sent forth a mixed current of influences, now pouring 
the tides of a rationalistic philosophy through central Eu- 
rope, and now modifying and purifying them by the better 
tone of its Hegel, and more by its Schleiermacher, and 
more a hundred-fold than all, by its Neander. But its 
vast intellectual impulse and awakening power are unde- 
nied, and it seemed to leap into life fully matured, and 
helmed with the irresistible might of wisdom. Although 
still young (our own Harvard College being more than a 
century and a half the elder), it has from the first been a 
poiver, and is now without doubt the most flourishing insti- 
tution of learning in Germany, and perhaps in Europe and 
the world ; for learning has flown to the land of the Rhine, 
or the deepest enthusiasm for the most self-denying and 
profound scholarship which is at the same time broad and 
comprehensive, dwells, without controversy, where there 



14 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

is a more truly republican narrowness of the means and 
temptations of luxurious ease, and the absence of any 
mind-contracting spiritual idea, The number of students 
and professors of the University of Berlin reminds us of 
the palmy days of Bologna, Padua. Salamanca, and 
Prague. During the last few years, at a fair computation, 
the professors, ordinary and extraordinary, have numbered 
annually about one hundred and sixty, and the students 
about two thousand. The wide field of its intellectual 
sweep may be faintly surveyed by a glance at the range 
of studies contemplated in only one or two of its scientific 
departments. Let us take, for example, the Faculty of 
Theology. In a university which has been eminently the 
fountain-head of German philosophy, which has deeply 
nurtured the modern ideal systems sprung from the revi- 
val of the ancient Greek philosophies, it were hardly to be 
expected that pure theology could have breathed and lived 
in so egoistic an atmosphere. But when we mention the 
names of Schleiermacher, Marheineke, Theremin, Twes- 
ten, Jacobi, Neander, Hengstenberg, we see that every 
shade of theological opinion has been and is there repre- 
sented. In the Berlin university there has been at least 
no covering up of belief, and no necessity for it, but spir- 
itual freedom has even been passionately glorified, so that 
during the reign of the present king, when the increasing 
pressure of the influence of the state upon the church has 
made itself even but slightly felt in the circle of the uni- 
versity life, it has been repelled with a sensitiveness and 
vehemence that has appeared almost undignified. But 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 15 

the ulterior tendencies of monarchy at this day are too 
well understood. Even the German student of theology 
must select from the mass of lectures in his own faculty, 
for seven or eight lectures in the course of a day are as 
many as any ordinarily strong head or body can bear. 
But he has nevertheless the opportunity to hear lectures 
upon nearly every book of the Old Testament, each by a 
different professor, lectures especially on Hebrew exegesis 
in all its phases, lectures upon all the books of the New 
Testament with especial lectures upon the New Testament 
Greek, lectures upon Dogmatic Theology, the History 
of Doctrines, Practical Theology, Christian Philosophy, 
Church History in its different periods, History of Creeds, 
Church Antiquities, Church Psalmody, Church Liturgy, 
Symbolism, Polemics, Homiletics, Christian Morals. This 
is but a barren catalogue of names, without hinting at the 
living, personal influences of so many truly great minds, 
brought together, and creating the atmosphere of critical 
learning and profound thought. In the science of Phi- 
lology perhaps a more various field still is presented, for 
however Halle may contest the honors with Berlin in the 
purity of its Theology, and Heidelberg in the richness 
and majesty of its Jurisprudence, and Gottingen in its 
Natural Science, and Jena even in its Philosophy, none, 
not even Leipsic, may vie with Berlin in the modern and 
present glory of its Philology. The name of Bockh alone 
seems to absorb and outshine all living lights. I subjoin 
in the note, from a translation recently made by an- 
other, of the Catalogue of 1851, the names of philologi- 



16 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

cal lecturers and their themes. 1 It will be seen that the 
green and living fields of the modern languages are also 
entered; and it might here be added, that of late the 

1 Philology and Intbrpretation of Authors. — Prof. Bockh will 
lecture on Encyclopaedia and Methodology of Philology. Dr. Stein- 
thal on Historical Psychological Science of Language. Prof. Bopp 
will teach Sanscrit Grammar, also interpret selections from episodes 
of Maha, Bharata. Dr. Weber will teach Sanscrit Grammar ; the 
same, the History of Literature of the Vedas, Zend Grammar, 
Hymns of Rigveda and Kalidasa's Cakuntala, and will give private 
lessons in Sanscrit. 

Dr. Benary will give private lessons in Sanscrit. Dr. Aufrecht 
will continue his lectures on Sanscrit begun in the winter. Prof. 
Bockh will explain Pindar's Olympic and Pythic Odes. Prof. Ger- 
hard will lecture on Greek Tragedy. Prof. Benary will explain 
Orations in first book of Thucydides. Prof. Bekker, iEschines' Ora- 
tion against Ctesiphon. Prof. Heyse, Plato's Ivratylos. Prof. Franz, 
Books of Aristotle on Politics. Prof. Panof ka, Interpretation of Pono- 
anias. Prof. Curtius, Monuments and History of Athens. Prof. Ger- 
hard, Grecian Mythology. Prof. Geppert, the Phormio of Terence. 
Dr. Hertz, the Satires of Horace. Dr. Benary, Oration of Cicero for 
Milo. Prof. Geppert, History of Roman Literature. Dr. Hertz, 
Roman Remains; the same, History of Roman Law. Prof. Franz, 
Philological Discussions. Dr. Benary will give private lessons in 
Greek and Latin, and in writing Latin — also practice in Ancient 
and Modern Greek ; his Schola Grseca will be continued Wednesdays 
and Saturdays. Dr. Aufrecht, Comparison of Greek, Latin, and 
Gothic Grammars. Prof. Von der Hagen, Old German Language. 
Dr. Aufrecht, Explanations of Gothic Grammar. Prof. Von der 
Hagen, the Nibelungen Lied. Prof. Wm. Grimm will interpret 
Conrad von Wiistzburg's Poem Engelhast. 

Dr. Aufrecht will explain Old Norse Reader. Dr. Kopke will 
lecture on History of Modern Literature. Prof. Von Hagen, on the 
Middle Ages, particularly on the feasts, games, manners, customs, 
and popular books. Dr. Steinthal will explain Rabbinical Theolo- 
gical or Grammatical Writings. Prof. Petermann will teach Arme- 
nian Grammar. Prof. Dieterici will interpret the Koran ; will give 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 17 

English language has been made the theme of that re- 
search, which constitutes the German the mental miner of 
the world. 

The sciences of law, medicine, philosophy, history, 
mathematics, physics, geography, political economy, and 
art, are in the same manner expansively and minutely 
laid open by lectures. Indeed, the lecture explains the 
whole philosophy of the German university system, as a 
leaf the plant, or a shaft the edifice. The strictly academic 
period is supposed to have passed by, and the mind has 
become sufficiently matured to be enriched simply through 
suggestion, or it has acquired the power of assimilation, 
the method of self-growth, the law of thought, and the use 
of itself. It has also arrived at moral maturity, and does 
not need pressure out of itself to compel it to labor. This 

private lessons in Arabic; also lectures on Persian Language. Dr. 
Fonseca will lecture on Persian Literature and Grammar. Prof. 
Lepsius will teach Hieroglyphic Grammar. Prof. Schott will give 
lessons in Chinese ; ditto Mandschu Language. Dr. Cybueski will 
lecture on the oldest poem in the Slavic Language ; the same, on 
General Slavic Literature ; the same will give private lessons in 
Polish, Bohemian, Eussian, and Serbian Languages. Mr. Fabrucci 
will read on Italian Literature, and on the Jerusalem Delivered of 
Tasso ; will give private lessons on Italian and French. Mr. France- 
son will give public lectures on Moreto's Comedy, and private lessons 
in French, Italian, and Spanish. Dr. Wolheim will lecture publicly 
on Calderon's Dramas. Dr. Steinthal, on Songs of the Troubadours. 
Dr. Huber, on History of English Poetry since end of l£th century. 
Dr. Solly will explain Macbeth in English — will give a course of 
lectures on English Language, and give private lessons in same. Dr. 
Pietraszewski will lecture on Persian and Arabic, and give private 
lessons in same. Dr. Fonseca will give private lessons in Oriental, 
Roman, Scandinavian, and Modern Greek Languages. 
1* 



18 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

generous theory commonly affords two or three years of 
very grateful recreation to young men, who, if still pos- 
sessed of talent and will, are enabled by great brief exer- 
tions to finally obtain their doctorates. 

The German gymnasium may not fully represent the 
academic period of our American university, but in the 
classics, perhaps an equal facility is obtained in the gym- 
nasium with that obtained in the college, so that the Ger- 
man university, succeeding the gymnasium, bears the stu- 
dent as it were up, from the level whereon our college 
education would leave him. There can be little doubt 
that the German university system is a far broader theo- 
retical plan of education than any our own land as yet 
possesses, and may accomplish a far more perfected edu- 
cational result ; but generally viewed it is the still hive of 
vast erudition, rather than the school of practical and 
beneficent learning. A faithful student comes out of the 
university hall with his doctorate in his hand, his head 
almost gray, and his eyes blurred with toil ; he is more 
profoundly learned than many of our college professors 
and presidents ; but he looks about him weary and vacant, 
and what shall he do ? He cannot teach the ignorant and 
young, he who has been for years walking in rapt trance 
with the sovereign minds of the past ; he cannot preach 
or speak, for the fire and ambition of outer action has 
died within him : he has become a scholar, and nothing 
but a scholar, and therefore he must go on, and prepare 
himself for some scholar's position, also struggled for by 
a hundred others, or starve. He obtains the position, or 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 19 

drags out his life either as a beggar of supercilious official 
gratuity, or barely exists upon the meagre rewards of au- 
thorship too learned for the many, too curious for even 
the majority of the educated. 

This may exhibit perhaps the extreme tendency of 
the German University system, whose high praise is that 
it abhors superficialness, and is the hiding-place of pro- 
found science ; but does it not sometimes fail in practi- 
calness both of a direct or indirect nature, even becom- 
ing in that respect singularly inferior to the American 
University system ? Does it not fail in the communica- 
tion of its deep intellectual life with the living, true, and 
generous uses of learning ? Is it not too much like a 
reservoir, instead of a fountain'? If this be so, we 
would still ascribe it principally to the system of lec- 
tures, unvaried by any other method of instruction. 
There is in this method no other action of the stu- 
dent's mind required than that of receptivity, so that 
his powers of communication are after a time enfeebled 
and destroyed. He is a silent note-taking machine — his 
roll of " heften" being his sole confidant and mental coun- 
sellor. Professors are generally not even acquainted with 
their classes ; and their bond of intellectual union is the 
simple impulse of the student to sit regularly upon the 
bench before the lecturer. The uniform answer to this 
objection is that the final, protracted, and thorough exa- 
mination is an entire test of the quality of the student's 
acquisitions and a continual stimulus to exertion. But 
the mind may brace itself for an examination conducted 



20 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

in the quaint scholastic method of a university, where it 
has even lost the taste and the ability for a practical pro- 
fession which compels the student to move among com- 
mon minds, to bring himself down to the natural level 
of ordinary men. 

The plan both of American colleges and professional 
schools of mingling the recitation and discussion with the 
lecture, the old, wise Socratic method, creates a life and 
directness in the tone of mind, which the German scholar 
rarely possesses. His thought is far circling and circuitous, 
and while aiming always at exhaustion of the subject and 
profundity, loses in the moment of speaking or convers- 
ing the electric power over other minds Never was this 
more plainly illustrated than at the uneventful Union Diet 
held lately at Frankfort on the Rhine, where learned ora- 
tors consumed months over practical problems of legis- 
lation, which a Massachusetts or Connecticut member 
of the House of Representatives would have clearly 
solved in as many days. But this same circuitousness, 
minuteness, thoroughness, and patient, deep research on 
questions of exact science, in the review, the commentary, 
or the professorial chair, becomes admirable and nobly su- 
perior to mere facility. The suggestion, therefore, which 
a German professor himself has made, that in American 
universities a German thoroughness and profoundness 
should be aimed after in order to instruct those who are 
to become professors, scholars, and commentators, is worthy 
of all attention ; but the adoption of the entire German 
system of irresponsible lectures, would be fatal to the mental 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 21 

demands of our own land. A plan of education which has 
gradually grown with the wants of the country, beautifully 
adapting itself to the increasing intellectual exigencies, 
aiming ever after higher and higher results, and actually 
producing such men as Marshall, Webster, Everett, Story, 
Stuart, Choate, Mcllvaine, Wayland, Park, could not be 
exchanged for either the English system, which builds up 
a wonderful erudition in circumscribed lines of ancient 
lore ; or the German system which is rather adapted to 
make professors of students, than teachers of men. But 
that our collegiate system maybe improved by a longer term 
of study , and a more scientific as well as comprehensive plan 
of study, there is no denial. Yet we contend that either 
the method of English fellowships, or the longer continu- 
ing and more expanded system of the German universities 
must be allied to our own system — not supersede it — in 
order to effect results of profound scientific education for 
the few, combined with healthful practical education for the 
many. To lower, however, in anyway the standard of our 
present college system of studies, is a dangerous retrograde 
movement ; and to endeavor to make the college more prac- 
tical than it now is, would be to destroy it as the nursery of 
thought, science, and true mental discipline. The estab- 
lishment of the Reale Schule, as in Germany, to meet the 
practical wants of the land, would perhaps be far preferable 
to this. 

The University of Berlin has not the beauties of 
situation which old hill-bosomed Heidelberg has, or the 
fair Rhine-washed Bonn ; nor in its whole character is it 



22 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

a genuine type of the German university. The student is 
merged in the citizen, and the court and army outdazzle his 
quiet person and pursuits. Yet his identity is not wholly 
to be quenched even in a large metropolis; and although 
you do not meet in the streets of Berlin the loud-talking 
Bursch, pipe in mouth, hugely bearded, his velvet frock 
covered with tassels and embroidery, his polished boots 
glancing in the sun, his silver spurs clinking upon his 
heels, and a great dog measuring his stately pace by the 
deliberate steps of his master, yet you will find him of an 
evening in the Kneip, singing his university songs and 
drinking beer ; you may see the black, red, and golden 
ribbon of the Burschen fraternity, peeping from under his 
waistcoat ; he has still his processions and fackelzugs, his 
love of pipes, and his contempt of Philisters. A fackel- 
zug or torch-light procession, was given to Dr. Neander 
by the students of his faculty, while I was in Berlin. 

At about nine in the evening the students assembled 
upon a large square, at some distance from the professor's 
house, and each one, to the number of some two hundred, 
provided himself from a wagon which stood upon the 
ground, with a tall torch made of a bituminous sub- 
stance, and which burns brightly for nearly an hour. The 
procession was then formed, officered at certain intervals 
by a student on horseback, dressed in a cavalier costume, 
with a plumed cap, sword, and ornamented mantle. 1 By 

1 The German student, by ancient immunity, is entitled to wear 
the spurs and sword, and to claim the peculiar honors of knight- 
hood. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 23 

the sound of fine music, the procession with its flaming 
torches, marched through the principal streets of the city, 
followed by a dense crowd, until it arrived in front of the 
professor's dwelling. A delegation of the students then 
bore to Dr. Neander the present of a silver goblet ; and 
when silence was made, he appeared at the window and 
made a brief, heartful address. When it was concluded, 
torches were waved, swords were drawn and crossed in 
the air, two stanzas of the old student song — 

" Gaudeamus igitur 
Juvenes dum sumus, &c." — 

were sung in deep harmonious voices, and the procession 
moved slowly away. It is alone those instructors who are 
peculiarly admired and loved by their pupils, who ever ob- 
tain the honor of a fackelzug. And who so tenderly be- 
loved and honored as Neander ? he who had a heart in his 
teaching which all his learning could not extinguish ; who 
appealed to the noblest motives in his pupils, and scorned 
to ask them to accept without reason ; who called for sin- 
cerity in belief, knowing that no man can be a disciple of 
Christ, who insincerely believes ; who loved to discover 
and nourish truth wherever he found it, be it but a grain 
of mustard seed: who made his pupil his everlasting 
friend ! 

Among " the saints in light," satisfied in the deep 
longings of his soul, is now the beloved Neander. He came 
from the splendors of Plato to sit like a little child at the 
feet of Christ on earth, and now exalted with Him he be- 
holds " face to face." A spiritual nature like John from or- 



24 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

ganization, ever longing intellectually for the truth, ever 
yearning to believe, he found no rest for his soul, until the 
Holy Spirit gave him rest in Christ. Fluctuating in the 
answers of philosophy, that echoed sorrowfully back from 
the abyss of eternity, both before and after, he was at 
length led to Him, who answered all questions, filled all 
desires, brought even the culpable soul into living and 
loving alliance with a holy God, and thus afforded a ground 
of eternal repose. Singular was the history of his mind, 
and of his religious experience. God shaped it for its place 
as truly as the builder shapes a beautiful stone for the 
threshold of a temple. In himself, he seemed to typify 
the great stages of his own history of the Christian 
Church. From Jewish parentage, he advanced through the 
Platonic philosophy into pure Christianity, and upon him, 
as an instrument, has swung slowly around the philosophy 
of the present day into a deeper spiritual faith. The very 
elements of his character have contributed to this, for upon 
no one less large, less liberal, less free, less humble, less pure, 
and less Christlike, could this painful yet joyful movement 
have turned. The great trait of Neander which impressed 
the stranger, was his perfect unconsciousness of the outer 
world. Nature itself had shut his soul in, and seemed to 
say, " Thy labor and thy life are within. For thee, beauty, 
art, glory, the outer world are not. Thou art to be a 
minister in the hidden things of the spirit to bring them 
to light for others. Thou art to be a deepener of the 
human spirit, a refiner of it through Christ, to bring it 
nearer to God ! " In social intercourse how childlike was 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 25 

he, and willing to converse with the ignorant and the be- 
ginners ; how ready to hear all, and to answer all ; how 
full of gentleness and repose, never laughing but smiling, 
always ready to awaken from his own thoughts to assist 
the thoughts of others. The motto of his Raimund Lull 
was his motto : " He who loves not, lives not." With sad 
joy do I dwell upon those meetings for conversation at his 
house on Saturday evenings, when entering his study, 
piled with great tomes from floor to ceiling, he would be 
found seated in his long German wrapper, with a green 
shade over his eyes, silent and immovable before his small 
writing-table. Softly and without formality, the young 
men from all parts of Christendom would assemble and 
fill the room, finding their seats generally on the huge 
books about the floor. The little canary birds in which 
he delighted had now ceased to sing. Soon the good sis- 
ter, sent in by some friendly student the simple tea and 
zwieback. A gentle, friendly feeling, and a low genial con- 
versation ran around the room. Some question asked of 
Neander awoke his deep-toned voice, and his regular 
utterance, and all was stilled to listen. 

On every subject that could interest the scholar, 
thinker, and Christian, he freely gave his thought and 
opinion ; but the courses of every theme ran by an irre- 
sistible tendency to the interests of the spiritual kingdom 
of Christ. Especially was he animated and aroused in 
Christian movements in foreign lands, and in none more 
than in America, in her missions, her voluntary church 
system, the spiritual tone of her piety, and the unworldly 



26 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

motives of her preachers. He often said that if America 
could learn much from older Germany, Germany could 
learn yet more from America. He thought that the 
American Church might fairly and freshly start from the 
position of the Apostolic Church — the very life, heart, 
and spirit of Christ — without going back and through the 
weary philosophical errors and controversies of the old 
world. 

But let us look at Neander for a moment in his lecture 
room. Can that be he in long black surtout and high boots, 
with his hat pushed on the back of his head, who pulls it 
off with something of a jerk, and strides to his high wood- 
en desk, leaning his arms sprawled upon it, and putting 
down his face so that it is almost entirely concealed, and 
then seiziug a quill to pick it to pieces above his head 
swings regularly with the desk on one heel back and forth, 
sometimes even wheeling completely around, with his back 
to the audience, and still continuing his pendulum motion, 
his face all the while working, and his mouth opening, as 
if his ideas came to him in spasms. His complexion is 
swarthy, his hair black and thick, falling down over his fore- 
head, and his shaggy eyebrows almost conceal his eyes from 
view. His voice is guttural and harsh, with a regularly 
rising and falling intonation, but taken together with the 
majesty and spirituality of the thought, I have compared 
these heavy monotonous cadences to the long billows of the 
Pacific ocean, on which the soft tropical sun slept, the sun 
of a heavenly warmth and faith, truly harmonious sentences 
in spite of this deep harsh voice which seemed to speak 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 27 

that inner and under oceanic strength that Neander had, 
and which his lovelier qualities sometimes make us forget. 
A stranger, at first startled and even ludicrously discom- 
posed at his eccentric manner, soon lost this impression 
after listening to the beautiful original method of treating 
a theme, the rich generously yielded learning, the wonder- 
fully suggestive thought, the humble sublimity, of this 
great Theologian. 

Adjoining Neander's former lecture room is that of 
Prof. Ranke. Small in stature, he has a high, pale, intel- 
lectual face. His manner in the lecture room like that of 
Neander, is exceeding awkward and bookwormish, and his 
delivery to the last degree incoherent. Even German stu- 
dents themselves find it sometimes difficult to understand 
him. I have rarely ever heard a German professor who 
had the first elements of a good speaker, and I could not 
help thinking that it was always an unpleasant and pain- 
ful transference of the thinking machine, from its own 
silent workroom, to perform its convulsive evolutions and 
throes before the public eye. Not many doors from Prof. 
Ranke's lecture room is that of Prof. Hitter. He is the 
most simple, clear, and pleasant of German lecturers, and 
is still as enthusiastic as a child in the noble science which 
he has almost created. In his study may be seen twenty 
bulky volumes of fine manuscript, containing only the 
names of books cited in his great geographical work. 
Schelling, the last of the great names of German philosophy, 
has for some years ceased lecturing, his memory having 
become impaired. He looks as Kant is said to have done, 



28 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

like the mummy of an intense thought. Encke, the 
Astronomer, is a short man, with a rough hewn and hard 
countenance traversed in every part by mathematical sines 
and cosines. But I will not continue this personal remark, 
which might swell into a volume. Yet there is one whose 
name must at least be mentioned, Alexander von Hum- 
boldt. He may sometimes be seen at the meeting of the 
Academy, or passing through the hall. He is still hale 
and active, and his blue eye sparkles almost as brightly as 
when fifty years younger he stood on the Andes. What 
region of natural science has he not entered as a monarch 
conqueror, given to it laws, and brought it in tributary 
harmony with the central universal kingdom of physical 
law. He seemed to be chosen to see the finer, floating, else 
invisible affiliations of all sciences, and to bring them to- 
gether, to reveal their unity, by the commanding and deep 
seizure of his genius. While he lives, the world is rich 
with at least one mind of the first order, and when he dies, 
irreparably much will die with him. 

In learning as in many other things, America may go 
to school to Germany. In education, technically speak- 
ing, the laws of original investigation, thought, criticism, 
and critical science, are more thoroughly understood, 
and harmoniously developed, and the human mind itself 
has perhaps sounded deeper depths in Germany, than else- 
where. But Germany nevertheless has her positive and 
negative poles in relation to America, and it is only by re- 
pulsion in some things, that America may be benefited in 
other things by Germany. Let not America yield too 



THE UNIVERSITY OF FREDERIC WILLIAM. 29 

servilely and irnitatively its original Anglo-Saxon steadfast- 
ness, its own robust reason, and its own English precedents 
whether ethical or spiritual to the mental influence of Ger- 
many. That influence cannot and ought not to be obstinate- 
ly and narrowly resisted, for it is an undeniable phase in the 
development of the human mind, leading on to the deeper 
establishment of Divine plans of education and love. Ger- 
many is to America, what Greece was to Home. Germany 
must and will have a profound influence on America, form- 
ing a resistless intellectual gravitation, for Germany is the 
land of the free and fearless use of the Reason. And let it 
so be. It is well. Thought never permanently injured but 
only confirmed truth, and that is not truth, which will not 
harmonize with reason, sound criticism, and true philoso- 
phy. But let America not yield her own divine birth- 
right to think, reason, and philosophize, to Germany, or any 
other land. Let not America be ashamed of herself, of 
her own independent mentality, of her own ability to ar- 
rive at truth, and thus, possessing the healthier elements 
of practicality, and of a faith born humility, while learn- 
ing from Germany, she may teach her teacher, whom much 
learning has sometimes made mad, or at least produced a 
far too absolute and confident idea of philosophy. 



% f« 0f f xti\ix. 



THE HOME OF LUTHER 

The university town of Wittenberg, half way between 
Berlin and Leipsic, is now a mouldering place, but sleeps 
pleasantly on the meadows of the river Elbe, along whose 
banks Luther and Melancthon often walked together. 
The place has a quaint look, like a small Nuremberg, but 
without any of the richness of its art. I made a Protestant 
pilgrimage to this town, of such living importance in the 
spiritual and intellectual springs of the Reformation. It 
is no longer the joy of learning, and boast of Saxony. It 
was annexed in 1814 to the Prussian territory, and is at 
present a frontier garrison station of that kingdom. Sol- 
diers have deposed students, and the bayonet has stormed 
out the book. No longer are the streets thronged with 
young men of all nations, nobles as well as commoners, 
who once flocked to behold the brightness and feel the 
warmth of the new Light which had sprung up in Chris- 
tian philosophy ; when brother Martin's lecture-room, ere 
yet he was a Doctor, was so crowded with hearers, that a 
chamber could not be found large enough, and Aristotle, 
and St. Thomas, and Peter Lombard complained that they 
were forgotten. The University of Wittenberg was found- 
3 



34 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

ed by the Elector Frederic in 1502, and in 1508 the monk 
Martin Luther, then only twenty-five years old, was called 
from the cloisters of Erfurt to its chair of Philosophy. 
Much rather would he have been called to the chair of 
Theology, as he writes in the midst of his dialectic labors, 
to a friend, in 1509. "I am, through God's grace, right 
well, excepting that the study of Philosophy irks me, 
which I have striven since I came here to exchange for 
Theology — that Theology, I mean, which enters into the 
kernel of the nut, into the heart of the root, into the mar- 
row of the bone." Already the keen sword of the Spirit 
had found a way into his mind, the war had even before 
this begun, and he thirsted to throw his whole soul into 
the strife after higher and divine truth. His personal 
aspect at this time is thus described by the German histo- 
rian Planck : ' ; A downcast eye, a sorrowful gait, a glance 
which to the experienced observer betokened a spirit torn 
with inner conflict, but steadfastly made up for the strug- 
gle, and a fiery and melancholy earnestness in his whole 
appearance, singled out the young monk from all others." 
His popularity in the desk soon caused him to be called 
to the pulpit. He commenced to preach with a stammer- 
ing tongue, and a trembling, even painful timidity, — he 
hardly dared, it is related, to mount the chancel stairs ! 
Thus a great mind doing a great work is always laid at 
first deep in inner humility. The inner victory is ever 
the greatest. Such was the character of Zuingie, and even 
of the iron-moulded Knox. The foundation of strength is 
laid in an entire self-renouncing submission to the will 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 35 

and word of God, and thus as it were in the very bosom 
of the strength of God. 

Young Luther's timidity soon gave way before the 
torrent of his genius, and the power of that already formed 
and speaking within him. Simple and strong were his 
thoughts. Warmth, force, and freshness, the short path 
to the heart, and the straight one to the head, soon made 
him the pride of Wittenberg as a pulpit orator. His 
voice was singularly clear and flexible, though not in the 
earlier part of his life extraordinarily powerful. Said Lu- 
ther once, in his naive manner, " I have but a small, trum- 
pery voice, yet Master Philip Melancthon says, it can be 
heard a good distance." 

Luther could be restrained no longer from his theolo- 
gical studies. He was appointed Biblical Baccalaureate 
and Lecturer on Theology. So grounded and so resistless 
were his teachings from the Holy Writings, that even at 
this early period of his theological career, an older pro- 
fessor, held to be the most learned man living, then wrote 
of him, " The monk puts all the doctors to shame, and 
brings out a new teaching. For he lays himself upon the 
prophets and apostles, and stands upon the simple word. 
No one can oppose him with philosophy nor sophistry." 
It sounds strangely to us at this age, that a teaching 
founded upon the word of God should be termed " a new 
teaching," and yet this was Martin Luther's work in the 
world for which the world claims him as one of her great- 
est sons, and this was all he did, to powerfully draw back 
men's minds to the simple truth, that the Bible is the 



36 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

ultimate basis of faith, or the infallible truth ; the Bible, 
taken in its obvious sense, the broad analogy of Scripture, 
as it speaks to the sound, free, and sincere reason. This 
idea that Christ himself is the truth, and not men, was 
the essential single idea of the Reformation ; and here 
was that idea, like a seed under a stone pavement, strug- 
gling forth underneath the stone weight of a thousand 
years, in the studies and teachings of the young profes- 
sor of Wittenberg. 1 In 1512, Luther was made Doctor 
of Theology. With his soul afire to discover " the whole 
counsel of God " in his Word, he began the study of the 
original languages. Before this time he had read the 
Vulgate alone — the translation of a translation — -incor- 
rect though twice stamped infallible, and overlaid with 
the cold glosses of the fathers. This new and pure light, 
streaming from its original fount, scattered his darknesses 
and confirmed his faith ; for undoubtedly glimpses of the 
doctrine of Justification by Faith had already been given 
him ; and there is every proof that his mind was firmly 

1 Luther led back not only to the intellectual recognition of the 
ultimate authority of the Divine Word, but also to what might be 
called its heart recognition. His entire life, conversation, act, word, 
and look, betokened this thorough emotional penetration of the 
Gospel through all. " ! how great and glorious a thing it is to have 
before one the Word of God! with that we may at all times feel 
joyous and secure : we need never be in want of consolation, for 
we see before us in all its brightness, the pure and right way. He 
who loses sight of the Word of God falls into despair. The voice 
of heaven no longer sustains him ; he follows only the disorderly 
tendency of his heart, and of worldly vanity, which leads him on 
to his destruction." — Luther's lable-Talk. 



THE HOME OE LUTHER. 3*7 

settled upon this vital point, before the theological strifes 
concerning it had sprung up. His renown as a lecturer 
and preacher was now mightily growing. Wittenberg 
drew away the youth from Prague, from Leipsic, and from 
Heidelberg. England, and the furthest points of Europe, 
felt the strong spiritual magnetism. Rome had ' ; heard 
the fame thereof." Princes and governments had begun 
to express opinions for and against the tenor of Doctor 
Martin's teachings. 

In 1517 came the Absolution controversy, and then 
the broad serial steps which are worn polished in the 
memory of all Protestant Christians, and which all were 
laid in Wittenberg ; the nailing up of the theses ; the 
burning of the Pope's Bull ; the issuing forth of those 
noble electrifying tracts, such as Luther's " Sermon on 
Indulgences," his u Address to the Emperor and Chris- 
tian Nobility of the German Nation respecting a Refor- 
mation of Religion," his " Sermons on the Mass, on the 
Freedom of a Christian Man," &c, his German Trans- 
lation of the Bible, and his various epoch-making let- 
ters, pamphlets, and books, sent forth from time to time 
from the Wittenberg press, up to the very last hours of 
his life — these are the well-known skyward steps on which 
mounted the helmed angel of Reformation, towards the 
purity of rational Christianity. From this reason even 
Eisleben, where Luther was born, and Erfurt, where he 
lived as an Augustinian monk, are not so interesting to the 
Christian student as Wittenberg, where, humanly speak- 
ing, is the forge-house of the great work of the spiritual 



38 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

and intellectual movement of the 16th century. Here 
the groaning German Vulcan and his earnest Cyclops, 
blowing the kindling sparks of God's Spirit, and wielding 
the hammer of the Word, wrought upon the hard metal 
of human unbelief, till the world rung. Here they ham- 
mered in the face of all uncertainty and of instant and 
fiery death. There was no reason but God's interposing 
grace, why Luther's soul did not follow that of John Huss 
into heaven on a chariot of fire. 

The Palace Church, upon whose oak door Luther nail- 
ed the ninety-five Latin theses, defying, in religious chiv- 
alry, the world upon them, stands quite at the southern 
extremity of the town. It is just within the walls, and is 
itself defended upon its exposed side, by two heavy round 
towers, so that it looks as much like a fortress as a church, 
— a gray, battlemented old tower of the church militant. 
Within, it is at present, with the exception of a richly 
carved tomb of the good Elector Frederic the Wise, 
naked, unornamented, and almost gloomy. Nearly in the 
centre of the church are the graves of Luther and Me- 
lancthon, having simple plates of brass placed over them, 
which lie smooth and even with the stone pavement. The 
inscriptions are in abbreviated Latin, and are exceedingly 
simple — giving merely the names, titles, births, and 
deaths. On the walls immediately opposite these inscrip- 
tions, hang full-length pictures of the two Reformers, 
painted by Lucas Cranach. That of Luther is finely 
characteristic. He stands with his head elevated, his lion - 
like visage full of resolution, the Bible in his hands, and 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 39 

the feet stretched apart and firmly planted, the attitude 
of preaching. The hair is touched with gray. The dress 
is the usual long black doctor's gown, and white band 
drawn closely about the neck. 

In this bare, unadorned, stern, stone church, the life 
which comes from Christ, through the preaching of the 
truth, began to move in more than in one or two hearts. 
Here the stir, the wave began on that world's calm of error, 
so deep, so profound, so terrible, that " the very deep did 
rot." In the close old Romish pulpit, clamped to the 
rigid stone pillar, Luther preached " Christ and him cruci- 
fied," first with stammering tongue, then with bolder em- 
phasis, and then with sonorous tone that filled not only 
these stone vaults, but taken by the breath of G-od, swell- 
ed beyond, and filled the spiritual arches of the world, 
and still roll through them, as the cleansing thunder only 
dies till it has done its work. Here was laid down that 
strong preacher of " the everlasting gospel," broken by its 
" weight of glory," the hard wars of the spirit, and " the 
care of all the churches." Here rest Luther and Me- 
lancthon, as if a son of Thunder and a son of Consolation 
were always to be associated in the work of Christ, and 
even " in death they were not divided." Immediately 
after Luther's death, Melancthon wrote to a brother Re- 
former : " The anguish that inwardly convulses me is in- 
describable. As when two travellers are journeying the 
same way, and after they have long journeyed on in com- 
pany one of them falls, and the other mourns, so mourn I 
for my Luther. I always thought that I should go before 
him. and must I then be left behind % " 



40 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Church structures, where it may be, should be built of 
massive stone, if for no other reason than to enshrine for 
future ages holy historic memories. Thus we may now 
stand in the pulpits of Luther, and Zuingle, and Calvin • 
and would that we might also in the pulpits of Edwards, 
and Bellamy, and Mason ! There is a power from such 
religious antiquities, as in the stone column Joshua set up 
at Shechem, that flows out over a whole land, purifying 
and calming it, holding in awe the spirit of a lawless 
change — of mad temporary unbelief — and silently point- 
ing back to eternal truth, and to true, divine manifestations 
in the past. Let religion be shorn of antiquity — of its Past 
— and it may be made science, or metaphysics, or philosophy, 
but it is disconnected from the power of a soul-inflaming 
tracking Providence, from the Church of God through ages, 
and from the throne of Him who is the Ancient of days. 

Before leaving this old stone church of Wittenberg, we 
would joyfully recognize the truth, that the mighty work 
of Luther was chiefly accomplished through preaching. He 
was the creator of a new era in preaching as a lesser re- 
form springing from and bearing on the greater. He broke 
from the fetters of a heartless, pantomimic, story-telling, 
servile style of pulpit oratory, and rose to an authoritative 
style, authoritative because— like the preachiDg of the first 
three centuries of the Church — drawn from the Word of 
God. He came dripping from the living waters, to speak 
to the living consciences of men. As the highest moun- 
tains have been very suddenly heaved up on the face of 
the earth, so he rose at once above all men then living as a 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 41 

preacher by the internal force of truth. His native quali- 
ties were also those of a great preacher, imagination, im- 
mense memory, tact, ever fresh wit, a burning heart, and 
unresting energy. He had besides a Stephen-like, holy 
audaciousness — the pure emanation of a regenerated soul 
thrown on difficult days. And with all this, as if he were 
almost the thirteenth apostle, he had the rare genuine 
ministerial zeal — the " fire in the bones," which must out 
— the fire-baptism of the love of Christ. He was accus- 
tomed to say : " If we should everlastingly preach Christ, 
we should never enough comprehend Him. We should 
remain sucklings and tender infants, who have hardly 
learned yet to speak half a word, yea quarter of a word." 
From the Palace Church I went to the dwelling of 
Luther. This was precisely at the other extremity of the 
town, and on the way through the long, drowsy, grass- 
grown street, I passed the house of Melancthon, a nar- 
row but still most respectable looking mansion, and indeed 
one of the best in the place. Its door is pointed G-othic, 
and very low, with two massive stone seats upon either side. 
It is now occupied by a professor of the still existing but 
slumberous Theological School of Wittenberg. Luther's 
own dwelling or room is situated back from the street in 
the second story of what was formerly the old Augustine 
Convent, now the Theological School, and looks out upon 
the interior shadowy, stone quadrangle. In most respects 
— the natural wear of time excepted — it remains the same 
as at his death. It is a small square room, with dusky 
fresco paintings upon the ceiling, which is crossed regu- 
3* 



42 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

larly with antique heavy beam-work. The windows are 
formed of small, round panes of glass, about as large as 
tea-saucers. Over the inner door of the chamber is an 
autograph of Peter the Great in white paint or chalk, 
covered with a glass. 

The political and the religious reformers are thus as- 
sociated here together, and they may indeed be negatively 
compared, inasmuch as the one would have nothing to do 
with politics, and the other little or nothing with religion. 
It is not one of the least praises of Luther, that while he 
lived, civil strifes were not allowed to mix themselves with 
spiritual, although from the spiritual germ, the civil idea 
of freedom is always born. Continually was he saying 
like his master, to his more choleric Peter-like disciples, 
his Von Sickingens and Von Huttens (reverently to make 
the comparison), " Put up thy sword into its sheath " — " the 
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through 
God to the pulling down of strongholds." A tall Ger- 
man stove, said to have been constructed under the eye 
of Luther, and ornamented according to his direction with 
various scriptural and angelical devices, stands in one 
corner. Under the window, upon a slightly raised plat- 
form, is a rude chair or bench called, " Luther's profes- 
sor's chair," and before it is a heavy oaken table with a 
broad square top supported upon a rough standard and 
pedestal. This table has been most lamentably hacked 
by visitors, and even its sturdy German frame groans 
with such deep wounds. In a glass case are shown needle- 
work patterns of Luther's wife, the high-hearted Cathe- 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 43 

rine de Bora, one of them being a portrait of her hus- 
band, Luther's beer-cup, psalter, and various other relics, 
as well of the burgher as the professor. While examining 
the room — whether it occurred accidentally or purposely I 
know not — some one in the court below commenced play- 
ing " Luther's Hymn " on the horn. The key was soft yet 
deep, — that indescribable religious key-note that touches 
on the chord of solemnity in the soul, and awakes the 
thoughts of things eternal, and its strain mingled with, 
and bore gently on. the half- formed emotions and ideas of 
such a place. It was as if Luther's great spirit were 
breathing its welcome and its blessing to a stranger from 
a strange land, and harmoniously testifying that the love 
of God is not confined to one land, or age, or people, or 
tongue. 

The house of a great man is full of silent power, not 
only because we unconsciously contrast the narrowness of 
the place with the vastness of the spirit that once inhabited 
it, but because it stirs innerly and spiritual thoughts of 
him. Its walls were in one sense the confidants of his 
most secret sighs, his sincerest perhaps bitterest throbs, his 
deepest under life, his most thoughtful and also most natu- 
ral breathings. They are faithful confidants, and do not be- 
tray their trust, though they seem to say 'we have the sa- 
cred secret.' And who can tell what subtle moulding in- 
fluences the very position, figure, adorn ing, and furniture 
of a chamber may have had upon the reflections and opin- 
ions of its former indweller. The habitual gloom of its 
prospect may have thrown an insensible shadow over many 



44 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

a page. A beam of sunshine creeping in at a corner of 
the window may have given unsuspected birth to a golden 
thought which has brightened and made wealthy the hearts 
of thousands. 

The rough strength and heavy utility of oak work and 
stone work, may have unconsciously added a firmer tone 
to the expression of truth. It is true that Luther was not 
of so sensitive a temper as to be swayed like a fastidious 
poet by shadows and sunshine, but he was a man, and was 
not un impressible to those circumstances in which he liv- 
ed, and thus after the lapse of centuries, to be able to see, 
even in a most faint manner, some of the surroundings and 
earthly dependencies (abhangigkeiten) in which his being 
was once encircled .is next to communing with him in his 
most personal and characteristic works. In this low-roof- 
ed chamber, Luther's soul strengthened, sharpened, and 
gathered itself for the outside conflict. Here, through 
profound and hidden arts, he invoked the bright spirit of 
Intelligence — 

" Terror of darkness : thou king of Flames 
That with thy music-footed horse doth strike 
The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth, 
And hurl'st instructive fire about the world ! " 

Here his soul retired from the strife, to be calmed by the 
ministration of those balmy affections, which he had him- 
self as it were created and dared to enjoy. Here he call- 
ed about him his family and his heart-friends. Here the 
tender voices of his children joined with the sound of his 
own voice and harp, and he was reminded of the time, 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 45 

when he, with his little barefoot fellow-choristers, wander- 
ed from door to door, singing as the sun arose and declin- 
ed, hymns that awoke the pity and piety of the hearer. 
Doubtless he often related to his children at such times, 
how a good and rich lady of Magdeburg, struck with the 
beauty of his voice, and the taste and fervor of his singing, 
took him into her house and family, fed him. clothed him; 
and gave him the means of a thorough school education. 
Perhaps upon this very old massy oak table the evergreen 
Christmas tree was erected, and ornamented with burning 
tapers, and hung around with toys. Perhaps upon it, he 
wrote the conclusion of that Translation of the Bible, 
which was begun in his exile at Wartburg, and we might 
almost see him now pen in hand, waiting to put the spirit 
and the life in the sentence which Melancthon is drawing 
out from the original Hebrew. Over this table undoubt- 
edly, his head often bowed in prayer, and these walls listen 
ed to the strong appeals of a soul whose great power lay, 
after all, in its perfect faith in the efficiency of prayer, and 
in the real gift of the Holy Spirit. He rose from his 
knees to shake Rome. Luther's life swung between pray. 
er and action, or rather was a life of continual prayer, for 
his study, or his best study was prayer, and being a man who 
prayed as he studied, who continued " instant in prayer," he 
thus was not merely a lover but a seeker oi truth, a half cen- 
tury long and agonizing seeker. And this we believe 
to be very great praise, belonging to too few in the world's 
history. Many love truth, but many do not agonizingly 
seek it. Herein Luther differed from Erasmus, " that 



46 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

small pale man who feared to die," and from many others 
of his age ; perhaps he did not see more clearly than they, 
but when he saw, he advanced ; when he was clear, he em- 
braced with his soul ; he was no nurser of mysterious opin- 
ions, but a noble confessor and martyr of his belief; and 
he did not stop with one great discovery of truth, or one 
achieved effort of reform, but he went on from the Indul- 
gence victory, to the Mass triumph, to the pulling down 
of Papal Infallibility, to the advancement of purer 
theology, to the perfected day of rational freedom 
in spiritual things, to the consummate glory of seat- 
ing religion upon the unshakable throne of Revelation. 
We should not think it even essential to contend that Lu- 
ther always found truth, or that he found all the truth to 
be found ; and yet, no man ever set about finding it in a 
better way. He separated himself to it, time, talents, 
body, soul, as a victim to the altar. He did not spare 
days of iron toil, or nights of unresting study ; he refused 
to encumber himself with secondary cares ; he kept his 
mind clear and elastic by healthful, and cheerful practices ; 
he maintained his spirit pure and God-illumined by con- 
tinual prayer ; he ivon instruction from above ; and he 
went directly to draw from the living wells opened in 
the Divine Word, of whose Truth he was also a suffering 
witness. Was not this as sure, and as philosophical a 
method, as that of any a priori method, where a predeter- 
mined theory being engendered in the mind, all things, 
thoughts, proof, learning, are afterwards shaped to match 
its uncertain character. Truth is not gross, but does it 
not still have a body, a certainty, a certain habitation, and 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 47 

to find it, must not one be willing like Luther, to seek, to 
advance gradually, it may be painfully, to use the best 
guides, and never to imagine that he has found truth, 
merely because he has had some vivid dream of it. No 
one, at least, friend or foe, will call Luther a dreamer. If 
ever a man created, lived in, and contended with the actual, 
and with his eyes open to it. it was he. 

From Luther's room I went just without the Elster 
gate to see the spot where the oak once stood, under which 
Luther burned the Pope's Bull. A thrifty young oak 
now occupies its site, surrounded by a high paling, within 
which flowers are planted. The tree stands upon the 
rising bank of the Elbe, and commands a broad panorama 
of meadow and river. It is a free, open, and unconfined 
spot, as if the bold deed itself transacted upon it was not 
intended to be u done in a corner." Here Luther at nine 
o'clock in the wintry morning of the 10th December, 1520, 
encircled by his friends, the students of the University, 
and an immense concourse of people, having caused a 
kind of funeral pyre to be erected and set ablazing, hurl- 
ed into the flames with his own hand " Antichrist's Bull." 
as he pronounced it, and the Book of Papal Decretals, 
speaking in a loud clear voice these words from the book 
of Joshua : " Because thou hast troubled the Holy of the 
Lord, so be thou troubled and be thou consumed in eter- 
nal fire ! " In impressive contrast with this aroused ac- 
tion, this drawing the bolt from the ban-lightning of the 
Vatican, through this same Elster gate, Luther's pale, in- 
animate corpse, brought home from Eisleben, was borne 



48 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

past his house through a great multitude of weeping citi- 
zens, students, professors, and friends, to its last rest in 
the Palace Church. 

From the Elster gate I walked around outside the 
crumbling, ivy- hung walls and dried moat of the town, and 
entering the Palace Church gate, proceeded a little way 
up the street to Luther's Monument, standing in front of 
the Rathaus or Town-Hall. It was erected by the prede- 
cessor of the present King of Prussia, Fred. William III., 
and is altogether a costly and worthy memorial, worthier 
at least than that ivanting statue in the German Valhalla. 
The large square pedestal is of red polished granite, and 
the statue itself, which is of colossal size, as well as its 
canopied covering of light, open. Gothic work, are of 
bronze. The inscription upon it is one of Luther's pithy 
though rather homely versions of sacred text : 

"Ist'sGottes Wei-k 
So wird's beatehen, 
Ist's Men sch en's 
So wird'a untergehen." 

The statue is modelled from a cast of Schadow, one of 
the best sculptors Germany has produced. It idealizes 
Cranach's portrait, and to my own thought justly; for 
why should we not suppose that an artist like Cranach, 
although a remarkable artist and heralding star for his 
own age, was quite incompetent to represent much more 
than the strong, literal outline of a face. The poetry, 
or rather the truth, of portrait painting belonged to a 
later day, to Titian and Vandyke, who painted mind, 



THE HOME OF LUTHER. 49 

spirit, character, history, as well as flesh and blood. 
Would that we had a portrait of Luther from a haud 
like that of Vandyke. It would still be the bold, heavy 
under jawed, square countenance ; but there would be a 
more fine reflective grace thrown over all — a purer and 
higher spirit, or, as the Arabians say, his destiny would 
be stamped upon his brow, and a fire of genius and noble 
enthusiasm would stream from the blue eyes ; and we 
would not only have the indomitable Reformer, and the 
hero of widest freedom — religious and civil — to whom the 
last unbound nation, and the last unbound slave may look 
under Christ, but we would have the calm thinker, " deep 
in the books of God ; " the almost sole patient translator 
of the world of the Word ; the creator of the language 
of his country ; one who had mastered the learning of his 
time, had exposed the sophisms of Aristotle, and had 
shown the hollowness of the schools ; the sometime poet 
and musician ; the cheerful and witty companion ; the first 
and ever beloved of his fatherland, who now lives in her 
heart more truly than any living man ; the tremendous 
actor when the time called ; and the affectionate, genial, 
pious, simple-mannered scholar, friend, husband, father, 
when at his own hearth, and surrounded by those whom 
he trusted and loved. 



Jtopjrorjj, 



AUGSBURG. 

Augsburg was not one of the least of those imperial 
free cities which dotted the very centre of the old German 
land, where were wrought the transactions that influenced 
the political and social condition of Europe — of which 
towered, dreamy Nurenberg was one, and cathedral Re- 
gensburg was another — which can only be compared in the 
past with the imperial free city of Athens, and the Italian 
free cities of Florence and Pisa, small but self-sufficient 
republics, which from a defensive grew to a formidable 
power ; whose commerce traced every discovered corner of 
the globe ; whose arts still show wondrous hazard, rich- 
ness, stability, and piety ; whose armies fighting for prin- 
ciples, when the storm had passed, laid by the sword and 
matchlock to resume the hammer and shuttle; whose 
battle-cries ever rose first and loudest in those conflicts of 
civil and spiritual freedom, which shook and finally re- 
generated the middle ages, and whose influences in Central 
Europe are still living, working, and potent to regene- 
rate. 

Although dwindled from its ancient splendors — redu- 
ced from an integral government to the insignificant frac- 



54 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

tion of a feeble kingdom — the far-reaching arms of its 
trade withered, its burghers all laid in their sculptured 
tombs, Augsburg is even now not without witness of its 
vanished greatness. Its principal street, lifeless and still, 
like that river in Canada which the ebb of ocean leaves 
entirely dry, nevertheless awakes the sense of grandeur 
with its truly imperial breadth and length, and the certain 
sombre stateliness of its houses, covered as they are with 
blackened carvings and faded frescoes. But the glory of 
Augsburg is of a more peculiar nature — a higher light 
shines around its gray towers : for here was born the hope 
and confession of Protestant Christianity. The benefits 
which a reformed religion has given to the world, the 
falsities it has swept away — the individuals and races it 
has lifted from debasement — the hearts it has bound up — 
the souls it has redeemed — may in one true sense date 
their beginning from the confession of the German Protes- 
tant Reformers, first pronounced within the walls of Augs- 
burg, although the spring of it all is still further back, and 
rose up in Bethlehem, and is from the bosom of God. 
The Reformation, an " incorruptible seed," sown in the 
heart of one man by the finger of God, slowly ripening 
in the depths of his prepared spirit, bringing upon him, 
when from time to time proclaimed, hailstorms and tem- 
pests of danger and malediction ; by degrees drawing 
other hearts to its defence and nurture ; resisted at every 
growth as a monstrous heresy ; fulmined against by the 
highest powers of Church and State, yet gradually gaining 
breadth and ground, making most important additions of 



AUGSBURG. 55 

intellectual and civil support ; rearing itself because it was 
truth, step by step with even firmness and regulated 
strength against the essentially hollow errors of the age, 
had finally attained a point where policy itself dictated a 
recognition of its claims, and a haughty hierarchy could 
not deny their pressure ; then was the Augsburg Diet 
assembled, and the Augsburg Confession drawn up and 
adopted. God's Spirit never left so luminous, and straight, 
and broad a path from beginning to result in the history 
of man. 

On the afternoon of the 15th of June, 1530 (so theold 
German chronicles relate), the Emperor Charles V., after 
an eight years absence from Germany, arrived under the 
walls of Augsburg. The whole city went forth to meet him, 
and he entered the gate engirt and followed by the high 
legates of the Catholic Church, the first princes and nobles 
of Germany and Spain with their retainers and banners, 
the councillors and rulers of the city of Augsburg, two 
thousand troops of the municipal guard, splendidly array- 
ed, and a thousand lances of the Imperial army. The em- 
peror himself rode on horseback, under a moving silken 
canopy. He was at this time at the top of his colossal 
power, the undisputed lord of Germany, Austria, Bohemia, 
Hungary, Spain, Naples, Sicily, Burgundy, the Nether- 
lands, Mexico, Peru, and the New World without limit. 
Such power in the gradually popularizing gravitation of 
all human governments will never be possessed again by 
one man. His personal appearance was kinglike. His 
form was of good size, and his limbs long and rather slen- 



56 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

der. His face was grave and even stern, with marks of 
high cares, and of a certain reserve and coldness of tem- 
per. Charles V. was a man of decided, but slow ripen- 
ing genius, whose motto ' nondum? perfectly character- 
ized his thoughtful, patient, crafty, yet athletic and vastly 
ambitious mind. He was intellectually superior to the 
childishnesses of his age, but inferior also to its childlike 
enthusiasm and sincerity. 

The procession moved on through the broad Maximil- 
ian Strasse, up to the Cathedral, where a Te Deum was 
sung and the Romish Legate Campeggio pronounced the 
benediction. All kneeled excepting a few Protestant 
princes, who, heroic in their new Faith, would exhibit by 
no word or sign, any lingering respect for ceremonies or 
worship, which they considered inherently corrupt. The 
next day was the day of the Festival of the Holy Body of 
Christ, and all persons in Augsburg were required by Im- 
perial command to observe the day with its accustomed re- 
ligious exercises, and to take part in the services of the 
Cathedral. This was the very question at issue, and cor- 
responded precisely with the question respecting the cele- 
bration of the mass ceremony in Edinburgh at the time of the 
return of Queen Mary, and here in moral superiority to the 
Scottish princes, the nobles and leaders of the Protestant 
party positively refused to obey, and one of them, the Mar- 
grave George of Brandenburg, told the Emperor that " be- 
fore he would so betray God and his Gospel, he would 
kneel down before his majesty, and suffer his head to be 
hewed from his body." This speech he accompanied by 



AUGSBURG. 5*7 

a significant and energetic gesture. The Emperor, seeing 
the steadfastness of these earnest and noble men, granted 
them the freedom to act as their consciences dictated. 
Upon the following day the Diet was opened by speeches 
from the Pope's legates and the German princes, at first 
upon the old matter of the war against the Turks, but af- 
terwards upon the true object of the Diet, the religious 
condition of Germany. It was boldly and distinctly de- 
clared that something serious, remedial, and immediate 
should be done ; — that the edict of Worms, which con- 
demned Luther as a heretic, repressed his writings, and es- 
tablished a censorship over the German press, was no lon- 
ger to be endured ; — and that the claims and desires of so 
numerous and powerful a body as the German Protestants, 
should be formally and solemnly attended to. It was at 
length decided, with the consent of the Emperor, that the 
wants, and the peculiar religious tenets of the Lutheran 
party should be set forth clearly and succinctly in writing, 
which statement, if approved, should form as it were the 
constitution of a new and independent church. The dis- 
ciplined pen of Melancthon had already performed this task. 
The document was signed by the chief princes, nobles, and 
distinguished men of the Protestant body, and declared to 
be ready for a reading. Charles, ever secretly opposed to 
the reform movement, not so much from any clear religious 
conviction or profound spiritual sense of divine truth, (as 
a German poet said of him, 

" In diesera liiesenbusen wohnt kem Hertz, 
Nicht tont in ihm der Gottheit Anklang wieder,") 
4 



58 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

but rather from political motives, being sagacious to per- 
ceive that the free tone of thought assumed by Luther and 
his followers, opposed genuine obstacles to his life-revolved 
plan of universal dominion, — when he was informed that 
the confession was prepared, immediately endeavored to 
prevent a public proclamation of the same, declaring that 
a private perusal by himself and his counsellors was suffi- 
cient. But a greater power than his controlled this event. 
The indignant and persevering rejection of the Emperor's 
proposal by the Protestant party resulted in a decision 
that the 25th of June, 1530, should be the day appointed 
for the reading of the Instrument. . 

The Emperor, still determined to render the confession 
of the Reformed Faith of as little weight and impressive- 
ness as possible, to weaken by political formalities its mor- 
al power and life, to dephlogisticate its hidden, dangerous 
spiritual fire, changed the place of the next meeting of the 
Diet from the " Golden Hall " of the Rathaus, to the small 
chapel of the Bishop's palace, where he was then residing. 
This room would contain comparatively few persons, but 
the feeling ran so high, and at the hour of assembling the 
Diet the crowd collected was so great, that the windows 
of the Chapel were taken out, broad steps were erected up 
to them upon the outside, and the immense square in front 
of the Palace was soon filled with an eager and listening 
multitude. The chamber itself, which I visited, though 
now somewhat changed, appears to have been a light, airy, 
and a highly gilded and adorned apartment, and the an- 
cient episcopal and papal insignia are still to be seen in its 



AUGSBURG. 59 

rich wood carvings. Charles was seated on a raised dais, 
flanked on either side by his Catholic princes and clergy, 
among whom were to be recognized his brother and suc- 
cessor, King Ferdinand, the wily and honey-tongued Car- 
dinal Campeggio, the violent and utterly implacable oppo- 
nent of Lutheranism, Duke William of Bavaria, and its 
earlier and more magnanimous foe, Margrave George of 
Saxony. On the opposite side of the room sat the nobles 
and doctors of the Protestant party. At the head of these 
was the Elector Frederic of Saxony, the firm-minded son 
of the great and pious Frederic the Wise, the oldest friend 
and unflinching protector of Luther. Luther himself was 
not present. He had voluntarily remained behind at Co- 
burg, generously supposing that his presence in the heated 
state of affairs, might possibly mar or prevent the peace- 
ful settlement of those interests, the unfolding of whose 
measureless importance was owing, through God, to his 
own efforts and intellect. His place, however, was filled by 
an entirely worthy representative, a small unobtrusive 
man, with a high forehead, pleasant blue eyes, and mild, 
contemplative face, clad in "a long blue surtout, with 
white sleeves, and buttoned close up to the neck." Such 
was Philip Melancthcn in his outward appearance ; it 
would be more difficult to describe the features and pro- 
portions of his ample, ornamented mind, which, beyond 
that perhaps of any historical man, illustrated the " vim 
temperatam " of Horace, — the power of a mental reflection 
from which the passions, small by nature or repressed by 
principle, were withdrawn, and a tranquil surface covered 



60 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

profound depths of clear thought. Two copies of the con- 
fession were presented to the assembly, one in Latin and 
the other in German. The Emperor made known his 
wish that the Latin copy should alone be read, but the 
Elector Frederic spoke out intrepidly, ; ' We are standing, 
Sire, on German ground, and your majesty should allow 
the German exemplar to be read, so that all may under- 
stand to what we confess." Thereupon Charles waived 
his desire, and the Saxon Chancellor, Dr. Christian Bayer, 
read the Confession in German, in so loud and distinct a 
voice, that not only all in the room, but those at the win- 
dows, and the whole multitude in the court of the palace, 
heard his every word. " The reading," says a German au- 
thor, " occupied two hours, and during that time there was 
a wonderful stillness ; assuredly, a scene whose true sub- 
limity has not been equalled since the days when the Chris- 
tian religion itself was proclaimed to men. The moral 
close of a conflict in which the flashing cross-lights of hea- 
ven and hell had mingled, it was the firm shining forth of 
the pure, mild, resistless element of truth. The actors, 
the interests, the influences to follow, constitute it a 
central point in the post-apostolical history of the Church, 
and the turning point of a reflow of pure Christianity 
from its natural decadence after its positive introduction 
into the world, to its renewed, progressive and eternal tri- 
umphs. 

The Confession itself, regarded in a historical or re- 
ligious view, is a clear, powerful, and dignified production. 
It commences with a respectful address to the Emperor, 



AUGSBURU. 61 

a few briefly but very strongly expressed reasons why a 
universal ecclesiastical council should be called, and the 
declaration that all which follows is derived from, and 
rests for its authority, solely on the Holy Scriptures. 
The body of the Confession is divided into two parts, the 
first part stating the entire religious creed of the Protestants 
(who had obtained their name but the year before at 
Spires), and dwelling more particularly upon such doc- 
trines as had been obliterated and lost sight of in the 
Romish Church, especially the doctrine of Justification 
by Faith ; the second part stating formally and separately 
what were conceived to be the distinct errors of the Ito- 
mish Church. This Confession, with the exception of the 
" Loci Communes" of Melancthon, may be considered to 
be the first full, pure, and intelligent digest of Christian 
belief, as drawn simply and directly from the Scriptures, 
which the mind of man had ever made. It is not perfect; 
for the Bible, on which it rests back, is the only perfect 
source of doctrine, and, as the Confession itself implies, of 
genuine Protestantism ; but it was as perfect as its authors 
were capable of making it, and no man then living was 
better qualified for the consummation of this work by 
his unspotted piety, pure heart, accuracy, supereminent 
scholarship, especially in the Greek, broad philosophy and 
calm judgment, than Philip Melancthon. 

The monstrous opinions hitherto so liberally assigned 
to the disciples of the Reformed faith, were in this care- 
fully expressed instrument, mildly shown to be unfound- 
ed calumnies. That faith passed out from the clouds like 



62 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the sun no more to be obscured. Its writer infused into 
every part and sentence of the Confession, the firm gentle- 
ness of his own spirit, and the divine love of the religion 
which it set forth. Luther is said to have written back 
when the Confession was sent to him for his approval : 
" I have read Philip's apology. It pleased me well, and 
I see nothing in it to alter, which indeed I could not 
worthily do, seeing that I could not myself tread so soft 
and so low. May it have much and good fruit, as we hope 
and pray. Amen." 

Before " principalities and powers," in the face of the 
world, Protestantism asserted its claims, compelled them 
to be recognized, ceased to be a sect, and rose to the full 
honors and beautiful proportions of a Christian Church. 
It only now remains for Protestantism, having overcome 
its ancient foe and every other enemy of the pure gospel, 
to drop its glorious old war name, and to become what 
it is inherently, and in the golden victorious peace, will 
some time become — simply Christianity. 



%\t tentri &\m\. 



THE COUNTKY CHUECH. 

Upon a bright spring afternoon, a young American, 
the student of a beautiful art, and myself, started for a 
ramble from the city of Leipsic into the country. We 
went out of the northeastern gate, and were soon upon the 
broad plains in the middle of which Leipsic stands. We 
crossed over a portion of the battle-field, where the churn- 
ing surge of conflict rolled backward and inward toward 
the city, and we stopped upon the almost lifeless plain 
to listen if no echo of the combat lingered still upon it ; 
but no sound came to our ear save the occasional low of 
cattle, or the faintly distant chimings of the Leipsic 
Cathedral. On these gently undulating plains of the 
Partha, and the low, flat meadows bordering the Elster, 
the wondering Saxon boor, like the hind of Virgil, turns 
up each spring with his plough, the half eaten blade and 
rusted cuirass, and enjoys his pipe and beer, sitting per- 
haps on the turf of a hero, or whistles as he cuts the 
grain, where a human harvest was mowed before the cut- 
ting death-wind of the cannon. Here were strown broken 
artillery wagons and overturned cannon, mingled with the 

dying and dead — enveloped in lurid, shaking curtains 

4* 



66 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

of smoke, and rocked with the awful din of men, horses, 
roaring of artillery, and bursting of bombs. Doubly 
peaceful now from the contrast lie these sleeping plains, 
which give one a good idea of much of the scenery of the 
flat, monotonous land of Northern Germany bordering upon 
the Baltic Sea. No hill, no greenly-swelling eminence, 
arose in the distance, upon which the eye could for a mo- 
ment gratefully rest ; and on this side of the city hardly a 
tree was to be seen, excepting some shorn, leafless poplar, 
looking more like a signal-post or boundary-mark than a 
living production of nature. There were no fences as in 
our own country to partition and define the extent of dif- 
ferent farms ; no flocks of animals browsed on the inter- 
minable stretch of the meadows; and were it not for a 
windmill here and there, throwing its huge arms lazily 
around, like a giant awakened from slumber, one would 
have pronounced nature dead, and the land deserted by 
its inhabitants. Yet as we walked along, the sky-larks — 
birds we do not see in America — sprung on all sides 
of us in perpendicular flights to the clouds, leaving behind 
them a faintly lessening thread of melody ; and do they 
not praise God in this like a mounting soul ; for while 
they sing they ascend, and on the very heart-beating 
rounds of their song, they climb up into heaven. 

We soon struck off from the main road, and took a 
by-path leading through several small villages, where the 
same still melancholy spirit seemed to dwell ; low mud- 
walled cottages, with their tiny besmoked windows look- 
ing more like kennels than human habitations : clumsy 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 67 

earth-besmeared wagons and rude implements of hus- 
bandry, rude as if belonging to the old Alemanni, lying 
carlessly before the cot-door ; stagnant pools of water in 
the market-place ; and a few old crones crawling around 
the streets with pipes in their mouths and great loads of 
sticks on their backs. We soon, however, reached a spot 
where the landscape was somewhat more attractive. It was 
the small village of T , on one side of which, entirely re- 
moved from the rest of the buildings, and standing on the 
summit of a symmetrical green eminence, the pathway 
leading up to it being also itself grass-grown, was a little 
country church, nothing remarkable in its history or as- 
sociations, but from its picturesqueness, or the frame of 
mind I was in at the time, or some other cause, has left 
a quiet but indelible impression on the memory of the 
feelings. The church itself was very diminutive, a hollow 
altar rather than a temple, but yet seemed built for ages. 
Its massive stone walls were surmounted by a red-tiled 
pointed spire, and only one narrow window appeared on 
the side. It was surrounded by gray and moss-grown 
tombstones, so close to the church, that the forms of the 
rude urns and the broken angels, cast their shadows upon 
its very sides. It seemed as if the graves had nestled up 
to the sanctuary, and as if the emblems of death and eter- 
nal life mingled with and by turns shadowed each other. 
How quiet, how holy a resting-place, I thought, on this 
little hill of Sion so nigh to the house of the Lord. Is 
there not sometimes a superstition of the imagination 
which does no harm to the faith of the heart — the clear 



08 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

hope of the reason ? As the sun rises, mounts to his 
zenith, and sinks to his setting, each ancient gravestone 
here catches a beam of his benignant smile, and peacefully 
the dust beneath sinks back to the dust whence it sprung. 
We laid our ear to the key-hole of the little church, and 
the sound of the wind, low breathing through its empty 
aisles, was most solemn — most musical : it seemed like the 
breath, the pneuma of the past centuries of devotion. 
The old oaken door, clamped with iron, and worm-eaten, 
and time-eaten, informed us in quaint figures of iron, that 
the date of the structure was in 1660, just forty years after 
the landing of the pilgrims ; and here were we, sons of the 
pilgrims, sitting under the wall of a building reared on its 
small foundation, and dedicated to the pilgrims' God, and to 
the service of the Reformed religion, when the clock of 
time was striking the birth hour of our country ; Ame- 
rica had been new-born, a continent peopled, and a nation 
counting its millions, and weaving its colossal arms over 
a quarter of the globe, had sprung into magnificent exist- 
ence : while this little German church, in old, slumberous 
Central Europe, had been quietly standing on the top of 
its small green eminence, pointing the time and pointing 
the eternity, looking down on the homely lives of a few pea- 
sants, and when their simple history was ended, gathering 
them close within its tranquil shadow to slumber until 
awakened on the morning of the resurrection. 



fcJUler's dottep. 



SCHILLER'S COTTAGE. 

They who have resided for any time in Leipsic, will 
know how pleasant a walk it is. to turn off from the 
public promenade with its swarms of round-faced infant 
booksellers and their nurses, and passing over the bridge 
at the head of Frankfurter Strasse, to go through the 
Rosenthal, to the village of Grohlis. The Rosenthal is an 
extensive park, partly natural and partly artificial, man- 
tling the southwestern environs of the city. It consists 
of well-grown, thrifty trees, and smooth green swards, 
with here and there openings in the wood to reveal a dis- 
tant landscape, and now and then a rustic seat to invite a 
moment's musing repose. Plow desirable such parks 
would be in our own larger cities, affording to business 
men, toiling clerks, hard-working laborers, professional 
men who are bound to their local cares by steel bands, 
and by the stronger American intensity of soul, an oppor- 
tunity daily to behold the calm, beautiful face of nature, 
to be shaded by the green leaves, to be wet with the down- 
shaken dew, to see the grass springing, and to hear the 
birds sing. All people must yield to the Germans in 
their healthy, ardent, cultured love of nature. This is 



72 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

no artificial and feigned passion with them. It is ingrain- 
ed with their own natures, even in instances where in 
other respects those natures may seem to be sensuous and 
coarse. The German merchant loves to lock up his busi- 
ness cares and thoughts in his small counting-room, and to 
go forth to breathe the fresh air without the crowded gates : 
to meet his friends and neighbors under the checkered tree 
shadows, and on the green carpets of the meadows, when 
the afternoon shadows lengthen, and as in the old Roman 
days, " the merry town empties itself into the fields." 
Then his soul is joyous as a child's, and he sports with 
the children who go out with him to learn the same lessons 
of the love of nature. His minute, artistic, and soul- 
animated observation of nature would surprise the stranger, 
and greatly softens and spiritualizes other more material 
traits. Even German graveyards look like embowered 
wicket-gates into eternity. Nature itself in Germany is 
every where carefully and ingeniously aided and heighten- 
ed by art ; and it surely may be said, that never, as in 
other countries, are her original charms despoiled. A 
German does not cut down trees, but cherishes almost with 
the care of his Druid ancestors, all the venerable God- 
sown children of the oaken land. 

Thus, almost by a step, you are free of the city, and, 
as if by magic, of all its memories, and breathing the 
pure, tranquil air of the forest leaves. From the extent 
of the wood, the crowd which may enter it with you is 
soon scattered thinly over its face, and your thoughts need 
suffer no disturbance, if now and then you should meet a 



Schiller's cottage. 73 

company of laughing, light-hearted students ; or overtake 
a feeble, white-haired valetudinarian ; or even encounter 
the brown-cheeked Jager himself, who, with his green 
frock and short carbine, strides with a swift, free pace 
through his leafy domain. Here the birds, unterrified 
by the shot, hold their long summer revelry ; and the full, 
round note of the nightingale, clear and gently ringing as 
the undulating echo of a silver bell, may be heard on the 
hazy rim of the twilight. After having traversed the 
forest, you reach a rude wooden bridge, by whose side 
leans an old mill, through whose jagged wheel the darkly 
shadowed water rushes swiftly. A step beyond this, is 
the village of Gohlis ; and in a narrow lane of that vil- 
lage, slightly back from the road, stands a dwelling which 
goes by the name of " Schiller's Cottage." It is so mo- 
dest, so humble, that it hardly seems to dare to look over 
the tall stone fence and lordly gateway, which modern re- 
spect and enthusiasm have erected before it. Its narrow 
face of rough, crossed beam-work and mortar is partially 
covered by a creeping vine ; and over two little windows 
that peep out from under the sharply slanting tiles, catch- 
ing the rays of the evening sun, and glowing like two 
diamonds in his parting smile, are written the words 
" Schiller's Study." The gate itself bears this inscription 
in German : 

"here dwelt 
SCHILLER, 

AND WROTE HIS SONG OF JOY I\ THE YEAR 

1*785." 



74 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

. In poverty, with a dawning reputation that had made 
more enemies than friends, as yet unpatronized by dukes, 
and unsolicited by kings, an exile and stranger, "here 
dwelt Schiller, and wrote his Song of Joy." The song thus 
written was the song of a strong soul, and of none but a 
born poet, to whom, as was Schifler's favorite idea, God 
had given genius to be developed irresistibly, as a native 
crown of royalty. The poem itself belongs to his more 
youthful period ; and in spite of its fiery singular mixture 
of the Christian and pagan, philosopher and bacchanal, 
has outshooting gleams of noble thought on flame ; and in 
the reeling, flushed face of a satyr, bears sweet eyes of love. 
Schiller, we believe, loved man, though he himself was 
high and haughty. The following is a plain but nearly 
literal translation of the song, with the exception of two 
strophes and three antistrophes : 

TO JOY. 

Joy, the beautiful spark of gods, 

Daughter from Elysium, 
We enter, as with fire drunken, 

Heavenly one, thy holy place. 
Thine enchantment knits together 

What strong Custom rends apart ; 
All of mankind shall be brothers, 

Where thy soft wing folds itself. 

CHORUS. 

Be ye now embrac'd, ye millions! 

Be this kiss to all the world ! 

Brothers — o'er the starry tent 
A loving Father there doth dwell. 



schiller's cottage. 75 

He to whom the great lot happens, 

To be friend unto a friend, 
"Who has found a lovely woman, 

Let him join his jubilee ! 
Yea, who only one soul even 

Calls his own, upon the sphere! 
He who cannot do this, weeping 

Let him steal from out our band. 

CHORUS. 

Whatever fills the mighty ring, 

Homage yield to Sympathy ! 

She conducteth to the stars, 
Where the Unknown hath his throne-seat. 

Every creature drinketh Joy 

From the fount of Nature's breasts, 
All the good, and all the evil, 

Follow in her rosy path. 
She gave the vine that waketh joy, 

And the love that's prov'd in death ; 
The lower joy is left the worm, 

And the cherub is with God. 

CHORUS. 

Do ye bow yourselves ye millions ? 

Dost thou know the Maker, world ?* 

Seek him o'er the starry tent ! 
There above the stars He dwells. 

Joy is called the mighty balance 

In eternal nature's round. 
Joy, Joy drives the wheels revolving 

Of the world's gigantic clock. 
She allures the flowers from blossoms, 

And the suns from firmament, 
Spheres she rolleth in the spaces 

Th' astronomer knoweth not. 

* Dost thou innerly perceive the Maker, world '? 



76 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

CHORUS. 

Happy as her suns are flying 

Through the heaven's splendid plain, 
Brothers, speed upon your path, 

Glad as hero to the triumph. 

Out from Truth's fire-flaming mirror 

She upon the seeker smiles. 
Up the hilly steep of Virtue 

She doth lead the sufferer. 
On Faith's sun-illumined summit 

She doth let her banners wave, 
Through the grave's wide-rended portal 

She flies to the angel choir. 

CHORUS. 

Bear courageously, ye millions! 

Suffer for the better world ! 

There above the starry tent 
Will a great God yield requital. 

The gods themselves can none make richer, 

Beauteous 'tis to be like them. 
Wo and Want shall e'en be welcom'd 

With the joyful to have joy. 
Hate and Wrath shall be forgotten, 

And our death-foe pardoned be; 
No sad tears shall wring his spirit — 

No remorse shall gnaw him more. 

In the remainder of the song, the poet is hurried on 
by his impetuous emotions — torrent-like in love as in 
scorn — into what seems to be hardly less than the insane. 
And thus Schiller is often overcome and bound captive 
by his own feelings and conceptions, all unlike Goethe ; 
though the comparison of these is as threadbare as a 
coronation robe, and yet it is still royal purple : for these 



SCHILLER S COTTAGE. 



are the two kaisers ruling at one moment over the Ger- 
man empire, and before them and after them, are no more 
emperors, and they both together represent in Germany, 
what the single imperial mind of Shakspeare does in Eng- 
land and America. Goethe is ever master of his imagina- 
tions, and "the spirits he has raised" obey him ; and he 
sits above them calm as Merlin, and waves them into life 
or into death. He plays with his spiritual offspring as a 
father plays with his own children — caressing, indulging, 
and sending them away. He is too sagacious to be van- 
quished by the creatures he has made ; and too philoso- 
phical, with his unpardonable faults, thus to be consumed 
by the fires he has himself kindled. But this self-martyr- 
dom — this all-spurning earnestness — makes Schiller the 
beloved, the passion, of Germany. With whatever uneven- 
nesses, he is placed in the deep shrine of the breast, while 
the calm, polished, great Goethe is raised on a lofty pedes- 
tal in the more outer vestibule of the mind. To enter a 
German soul, Goethe, we think, would be met before 
Schiller, not because he is himself less profound — for he 
is more profound — but because Pride stands nearer the 
door of the soul than Love. I cannot but find myself con- 
curring in the almost unique opinion of another, that Goethe 
is even more truly subjective than Schiller ; although 
while apparently impassive himself, he has thrown a more 
living, objective, natural light about all his creations. He 
is deeper than Schiller, though less to be loved. Goethe 
was as a great iceberg, broken from the Northern Ocean, 
and floating down into more populous seas, magnificently 



78 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

gleaming with every splendid color of heaven, and glowing 
with every swiftest tint, but far the greater part was hid 
in the black lone waters. Schiller was more like a noble 
tree, rooted in our dear common mother earth, bending 
its proud branches to the lowly earth, and yielding its 
fruits, as it would have yielded its life-currents, to men, 
while at the same time it shot loftily up into heaven, and 
defied the lightning of heaven in its arrogance. But to 
Schiller will Germans turn, and not to Groethe, in their 
woes, joys, freedom-struggles, and spirit-despairs. 



€\t Ifortj. 



THE HAETZ. 

The Hartz traveller from Berlin [makes his first stop 
at the city of Magdeburg on the Elbe, the ancient capital 
of Northern Saxony, its elephantine walls still estretching 
around it ; in whose river castle Baron Trenck, of school- 
boy sympathy, was long confined; where Luther, as a 
little charity scholar, sung hymns from door to door; 
which stood as the towered foreground to so many scenes of 
the thirty years' war ; and which was sacked by the Aus- 
trian Tilly, who slew thirty thousand of its inhabitants in 
revenge for their manful resistance to his arms. One sees 
in the cathedral the helm and right gauntlet of this cap- 
tain, whose name has gleamed down to us through blood and 
smoke, a watchword of terror, although history does not 
deny to it the praise of faithfulness and power. Austria 
and tyranny never seem to have lacked their Tillys ; their 
supremely devoted, able, and too often successful cham- 
pions. Tyranny has its spiritual correspondence in the 
very natures of some men, and there is therefore that en* 
thusiastic harmony of motive and plan which makes 
5 



82 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

strength. The Cathedral of Magdeburg is a majestic pile, 
but rather plain and bare when compared with the prodigious 
luxuriance of ornamental stone-carving usual to Gothic 
structures belonging to the twelfth and thirteenth centu- 
ries. It contains among other monuments, one of a noble 
frau, who after she had been buried some days, revived, 
and came out of her tomb. Those of my readers 
who would desire to know more of this strange history 
must of course go themselves to Magdeburg, and inquire 
of the pleasant old lady who told it to me. She will, 
I doubt not, give them full and minute information, for 
she had a tongue in her head, and she loved to hear it 
wag. 

I talked with her full half an hour, standing in the 
cool shadow of the cathedral spire, while she gestured en- 
ergetically with a bunch of keys nearly as large as her 
turban. She entered into all her family history. One 
of her boys had imbibed the religious gloom of the old 
church in his spirit, and he was going to be a preacher ; 
another had studied its stones and its pillars, and follow- 
ed with his childish eye its grandly springing arches, un- 
til they met and crossed in the high airy vault, and he 
was going to be a master mason. I left my old lady of 
the keys, and took a " post-wagon" to Halberstadt. This 
is a small city, still upon the plain, but within full sight 
of the " green palaces" of the Hartz mountains. Having 
no companion with whom to make a genuine student 
pedestrian excursion (the excursion to the Hartz is a fa- 
vorite one with German students), and there being no 



THE HARTZ. 83 

public conveyance to many of the localities of the region, 
I found it necessary at Halberstadt to hire a small moun- 
tain curricle. 

My coachman was a decayed postilion, who still wore 
his jackboots, and had not forgotten the ancient knack of 
making his whip sound like the report of a pistol. We 
commenced our journey from Halberstadt in a rain 
storm, and for the first few miles encountered no animated 
existence, excepting occasional flocks of geese, each tended 
by its little griselda, who sat patiently knitting on a rock 
hard by, clad in red petticoat and wooden shoes. But 
soon the clouds rolled away, and beneath the dewy-glisten- 
ing beams of the sun, a large company of Prussian lancers 
practised their morning exercises in a wide meadow at 
our side. Some of them were picketed at a great dis- 
tance, others had alighted and were standing in negligent 
attitudes by the side of their horses, and others still were 
in full action, spurring their steeds and swinging their 
lances, while the officers at regular and central positions, 
sat upon their chargers immovable as statues. Before 
reaching the mountains, we passed through the quaint 
town of Quedlinburg, the birth-place of that pure genius 
Klopstock, the ushering star of German literature. The 
streets of the town were so narrow, that verily it seemed 
as if one, standing in the centre with his arms extended, 
might have grasped the pipes of the red faced burghers 
who puffed away in solemn rivalry at their miniature win- 
dows on either side. Soon, however, the steep, frequent 
hills — the darkly wooded vales — the roaring, shingly 



84 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

streams — the bare, split, granite rocks — informed us that 
we had arrived at the Hartz highlands ; and full noon 
found us in the Selke valley at the foot of the mountains, 
upon whose high, sharp peak stands the gray Castle of 
Falkenstein, as if its walls grew out of the gray rock and 
were its termination. 

The first sight which greeted my eyes on entering the 
walls of the castle, was an extraordinary one. In the an- 
cient banqueting hall, now used as a room of entertain- 
ment, sat twelve German students, be-spectacled, be- 
bloused, and be-bearded, who were smoking their pipes, 
roaring their songs, and quaffing^beer. 

I visited all parts of this finely preserved stronghold, 
even more impressive than Stolzenfels on the Rhine, be- 
cause less re-antiquated. I walked through sounding 
stone galleries studded with broad-branching trophies of 
the chase ; looked into the deserted chapel where the faded 
crimson tapestry still mouldered over the proud seat 
of the lord ; glanced into gloomy chambers with stained 
windows, and black, carved oak ceilings ; climbed up to 
the loftiest watchtower, and from its windy height, looked 
up and down the narrow valley of the Selke, catching here 
and there glimpses of other towers, each on its solitary 
peak, and once tenanted, like this, with stormy hearts ; and 
yet who, with the faintest image of the gorgeous bannered 
Past painted on his imagination, can stand upon such 
spots — the desolate homes of chivalry — and not rush back 
in thought to the age when life was more vivid, personal, 
superb, bold ; when one strait path led up to honor ; when 



THE HARTZ. 85 

the simplicity of song stirred the soul to difficult deeds ; 
when the eye had a childish, exultant delight in the pomp 
and bravery of existence ; when men's hearts were more 
simple, though deluded, and their actions more earnest, 
though full of madness and folly. 

But peace to the old feudal ghost ! We would not 
awake it from its Gothic slumber, nor stir a dust upon its 
escutcheon tomb. Every age has its own right hue, and 
proper light in the great fresco of Time ; but we would 
not have back the age when the lurid, earthy light of a 
distorted faith shot across the picture — the pent-in age, 
when men's hearts needed to be riveted up in sheet iron, 
and their natures petrified in stone walls.* We believe 
that in our unideal age there is all that was great and 
good of chivalry ; that nature still gives birth to knightly 
souls ; that the spring of poetry still runs sweet, and 
clear, and free ; that the beautiful in nature and art is 
more truly felt ; that even woman, with all her demands, 
occupies a juster and nobler place ; that if we are not 
so impetuously earnest, we are not so monstrously para- 
doxical, and do not so ignorantly miss and confound the 
elements of right and wrong ; that if the picturesque, dar- 

* "With what matter of fact simplicity Froissart relates (taking 
exceptions only at the destruction of churches) the entire massacre of 
the inhabitants of Durham by the chivalric David of Scotland. " All 
were put to death without mercy, and without distinction of per- 
sons or ranks, men, women, children, monks, canons and priests; 
no one was spared, neither was there house or church left standing. 
It was pity thus to destroy, in Christendom, the churches wherein 
God was served and honored." 



86 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

ing exercise of rough power is less uncurbed, we have real 
freedom of mind and body; -that science has now realized 
more wonderful things than Ariosto's fiery imagination 
conceived ; that if we do not spur forth against Saladin and 
Solyman, we are waging a crusade against spiritual error, 
and hosts of the " Prince of the Powers of the Air ; " 
that if we do not rear Titanic temples to challenge the 
Divine regard, we do not perhaps so utterly neglect the 
more beautiful temple of Grod in the soul, whose arches 
rest deeper and spring more heavenly. Lo ! I have writ- 
ten an essay on chivalry. 

When I had descended from the mountain of Falken- 
stein, I sat down for a moment in the yard of the mill 
where I had left the carriage, and all the household, from 
white-haired and red-vested grandsire down to the little, 
tottling wooden-shoed child, gathered about me, offering 
every politeness which they could devise, evincing the 
greatest kindness to myself as a stranger, and the .utmost 
curiosity in regard to America. I have ever found, in 
travelling in Germany, especially in the primitive parts, 
that however rude their knowledge may be of his coun- 
try, the simple name of an American is a better 
opener of the heart's hospitality of the people than even 
the purse. 

In a rude little mill in the Franconian Switzerland, 
I once held an unexpected morning levee, brought to- 
gether by the mere report that I was from America; and 
I attempted to rectify some of the absurd geography, over- 
sanguine hopes, and over-desponding views, of the good 



THE HARTZ. 87 

people, whose group would have made a scene for the 
younger Teniers. Even the faint rumor that ours is a 
land which offers a home, if it never be reached, invests it 
and all that belongs to it, with a sweet, strange charm, 
like heaven. May it never be broken ! for the arms of our 
country, for ages to come, are great enough to go around, 
and gather in, and warm against its mighty heart the 
world of woe. All the poor of prince-ridden Germany 
and Europe might find house-room and kraut-ground in 
Nebraska alone. 

The ride from Falkenstein to Magdesprung through the 
valley of the Selke, is most charming. The mountains on 
either side are not extraordinarily high, but are gracefully 
rounded, and draped with the richest foliage. Among 
trees I noticed in flourishing perfection the oak (it may be 
remembered that the poetical name of G-ermany is ' ; Eichen- 
land"),the beech, the chestnut, the larch, the poplar, the al- 
der, the birch, and also a species of fir called the " tannen." 
It is a tree of most striking appearance — the tree of 
manly lamentations, as the willow of feminine sorrow. 
The stem is straight and tall, and the limbs branching 
out regularly in down-bending curves, and forming to- 
gether a conical shape, are clothed with long, dark, and 
heavy fringes of foliage. The green of this tree is so 
deathly sombre, its lines so harmonious and sweeping, its 
whole mass so still and shadowy, that, mingled with the 
rigid outline of the oak, the small and restless leaf of 
the birch, and the precise figure and light colors of the 
poplar, it forms a highly artistic contrast. 



88 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 



I met many a pilgrim with a knapsack upon his back, 
a staff in his hand, traversing this green and quiet valley ; 
and, taken in connection with the singular loveliness and 
peacefulness of the scene, I was reminded of those hope- 
ful, tranquil, and sunlit passages, when Bunyan's pilgrim 
having conquered the terrors of the way, is coming into 
the brighter regions, and threading the valleys which run 
greenly down from the heavenly mountains. 

Just as we had left the village of Magdesprung, we en- 
countered the carriage of the Duchess of Anhalt-Bernburg, 
drawn by four black horses, which came thundering down 
the mountain, accompanied by outriders. We had passed 
the ducal dwelling but a short time before. It may thus 
be seen that the Hartz, instead of being the wild and un- 
inhabited region which we generally conceive from read- 
ing the accounts of poets and legend-writers, is the abode 
of wealth and gayety, with frequent villages, tolerable 
roads, and here and there ornamented estates and princely 
mansions. 

Toward evening we drove into Alexisbad, whose Swiss- 
like site and chalybeate springs make it one of the most 
popular water-places in this part of Germany. It lies in 
a bowl of mountains, and contains a number of large and 
handsome houses, the most picturesque of which is the 
pavilion of the Duke of Anhalt, built in a rather too mag- 
nificent imitation of a Swiss cottage, upon the bank of 
the rushing stream which cleaves its way noisily down from 
the neighboring hills. 

The next morning found us early on the road to Victor- 



THE HARTZ. 89 

hohe ; but when we arrived at that commanding eminence, 
the little Rhigi of the Hartz, the mistiness of the morn- 
ing caused the otherwise magnificent prospect to be limit- 
ed and disappointing. We therefore resolved to push on 
immediately to the Rosstrappe. In order to reach this — 
next to the Brocken the most noted locality of the Hartz 
— it was necessary to emerge from the mountains, and de- 
scend into the plain that skirted their base. In accom- 
plishing this descent, we passed through the village of 
Gernrode, stuck upon so exceedingly steep a slope of the 
mountain, that surely none but a man with one leg longer 
than the other could have lived there with any comfort. 
In driving through the plain, sometimes in the very black 
shadow of the hills which rose perpendicularly out of it 
like a green wall, the only living objects we encountered 
were shepherds and their flocks. It being the middle of 
the day, the sun hot and high, and sheep and master hav- 
ing eaten their fill, the former were sleeping huddled in a 
lump, with the keen-eyed dog upon one side, and Corydon 
stretched upon his back, his crook by his side, and his 
broad hat over his face, upon the other. 

We at length arrived at the Inn of the Bleckhutte, 
not far from the base of the Rosstrappe Rock. The 
river Bode, an insignificant stream in the summer time, 
winds its circuitous way from the Brocken, which lies far 
back among the highlands, to the level plain out of which 
the Hartz mountains, so wall-like, rise. At this spot it 
makes its appearance, where a narrow and sudden gorge 
is cloven in the perpendicular front of the mountains, to 



90 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

give it egress. I procured a guide at the village, and 
commenced the ascent of the Rosstrappe Rock. After a 
quarter of an hour's climbing, we came to a small pavilion 
where a barefooted " Madchen " served out " berken- 
wasser ; " and a bareheaded old harper, with none of the 
sublimity of Wilhelm Meister's, tinkled on a most feebly 
tintinnabulating harp. 

I climbed the summit of the mountain, and at the 
extreme edge of a narrow rock jutting out on one side of 
the gorge of the Bode, and overhanging it fantastically, 
I was shown the veritable Rosstrappe itself, or the per- 
fect though magnified impress of a horse's hoof in the 
rock, with its rim, nails, and projections. The legend is 
this : that the Princess Bremhelda, pursued by a terrific 
giant, leaped her horse over the chasm of the Bode, and 
the mighty charger's hoof, striking upon the rock, sunk 
in its surface and left the wonderful dent now to be seen. 
In the agitation of this tremendous vault the crown drop- 
ped from the head of the princess and fell in the stream 
below, where, when the sun shines brightly, the rayed 
glitter of its jewelled circle may be seen, as well as the 
flaming eyes of the demon dog who keeps eternal watch 
over it. The Germans delight to warm their fancy by such 
weird fires. They would visit and speculate fantastically 
upon the print of a spirit-steed's hoof in stone, and leave 
their own flesh-and-blood horses unshod. In truth, a 
love for the vaguely and wildly supernatural rests upon 
the most disciplined understandings. I have heard in a 
circle of university professors, philologists, theologists, 



THE HARTZ. 91 

and philosophers, mostly old men, met for the purpose of 
scientific and scholastic discussion, a long paper read, occu- 
pying most of the evening, and listened to with absorbed 
attention, on the legend of the " Headless Huntsman." 
Over all the face of Germany the legendary light trembles 
and shoots, and every oak nests a sprite, and every stream 
sings a wild melody ; and perhaps this is well, for the rest 
of the world is growing practical and ignoble. The vivid 
impulse of the Greeks to people nature with mystery and 
invisible life belongs to the Germans. I have sometimes 
thought, in reading their poets, and in hearing educated 
Germans talk, that no persons ever desired more earnestly 
than they to have been born old Greek heathen. They 
mourn evermore for the " Golden Age" — the green and 
woody age — the age of the naiads and fauns — the age of 
nakedness, of reedy pipes, of frolic nature, of Pan, and 
of grape-garlanded Bacchus. Their romance has some- 
thing Greek, sensuous and pagan in it; something also, 
at times, too wild, baseless, and ridiculous to be even 
the beautiful and sportive creation of healthful minds. 
There is sometimes so much of earnestness in the most 
fantastic and absurd gambollings of the imagination, that 
we are startled to find them warming and furiously feel- 
ing, where we supposed they were, and where they were at 
first but sporting in the sun-rays of fancy. Goethe's idea 
of the " Golden Age," however, which he puts into the 
mouth of the wise and lovely Leonora d' Este, is more 
moderate and true : 



92 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

" My friend, the Golden Age is long gone by: 
The Good alone can ever bring it back ; 
And shall I truly tell you what I think ? 
The Golden Age, with which the poet loves 
To natter us, the perfect age, it was, 
So it appears to me, as little as it is ; 
And were it really, it were only so 
As we can always have it now again." 

From Rosstrappe Rock to the Golden Age : a mightier 
leap than the Princess Bremhelda's ! But the rock it- 
self should not thus leap away from our notice, being, 
even if it were unlegended, extremely imposing. The 
Rosstrappe precipice rises eight hundred feet sheer from 
the waters of the Bode, which' brawl with a feeble voice 
at its base. It forms an isolated out-jutting point, and 
is approached by a narrow peninsula of rocks, which, 
for greater security, has been guarded by a banister of 
ropes. Beneath lies the deep gorge of the river, whose 
shadowy line may be traced far back into the troubled 
ocean of mountains, even to dim Brocken, which hides 
its blue head in the clouds. 

While sitting on the precipice enjoying the wild beauty 
of the view, as if the hidden Prospero of the spot had 
commanded his spirits to shift the scene and reveal just 
for one moment its more gloomy power, a low heavy cloud, 
the Ethiop offspring of the mists of the hills, passed be- 
tween us and the sun, and as it moved slowly over our heads, 
its scowl visibly blackened upon rock and mountain, and 
a harsh growl of thunder rolled broken through the zigzag 
pass. But the cloud vanished ; and as the sun burst out 



THE HARTZ. 93 

more dazzling than before, giving the scene an almost 
Italian gleam, some young Germans who had joined me 
commenced singing in manly voices a hymn of the 
"Lyre and Sword" poet, to the praise of fatherland. 
The young men sang one or two German songs of the 
feelings, which are equalled in no language for exquisite 
tenderness, simplicity, and melody, seeming to have been 
born of a sigh from the heart, and to have gone out on 
the air, and been fashioned by wind, and leaves, and rain, 
and waves, into a melody of nature which the heart at 
once reclaims as her own. 

When we had descended into the ravine, the scenery 
grew still wilder and bolder. To look up from the foot of 
a precipice causes always a livelier impression of height 
and magnificence than to look down from its top ; the na- 
tural sensation of superiority which we experience while 
standing upon a great elevation is converted into a feeling 
of insignificance while standing beneath it. The gorge 
into which we had descended — itself scarcely five hundred 
yards wide — was shut in by perpendicular walls of gran- 
ite rock, which at their summit shot up into numberless 
slender and spire-shaped peaks, standing sharp against the 
blue sky, and having all the effect of a colossal line of 
Gothic ruins. Sometimes these crags toppled carelessly 
over the very edge of the chasm ; sometimes they leaned 
upon, crossed, and embraced each other ; and sometimes 
they rose as straight and erect toward heaven, and almost 
as slim and tapering, as a mountain pine. This same 
character of columnar rock is seen at T lichersfeld in the 



94 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Franconian Switzerland in absolute grandeur, where pil- 
lars tower up- from a plain, like gigantically magnified 
palm-tree stems, larger perhaps at their head than their 
base, and one walks among them as a mortal pigmy in 
the ruins of some temple of Odin or Thor. 

These fanciful crags of the Bode have also their fan- 
ciful names, such as the " Cathedral," the " Bishop," the 
" Nun," the " Giraffe Rock," the " Lion Rock," and the 
" Grate of the Bode." While following the noisy course 
of this mountain stream, which rushed along like a sobbing 
terrified child seeking to escape from so sombre a place, 
and sport itself upon the broad sunny plain, we came 
across an invalided soldier, who had once confronted the 
" Old Guard " at Dresden and Leipsic, and who now 
kept a cave to make echoes in. He had besides a little 
bird which he had taught to come at his call and eat from 
his hands. The echo in the cave at the report of a 
pistol was at first stunning, then musical and softly 
ringing, like the dying tones of a great organ. One might 
almost conceive it to be the moan of a harmonious spirit 
shut up by magic in the mountain. 

Our walk was soon terminated ; and my black ponies, 
refreshed by their rest at the good inn of the Bleckhutte, 
carried us swiftly over the plain to the old town of 
Blankenburg, where Henry the Fowler once lived ; where 
Louis the Eighteenth spent his incognito ; and where, in 
spite of the short uncomfortableness of a German bed — 
its feathery avalanche of coverlet, its central abyss and 
Alpine pillows — I slept until broad daylight streamed into 



THE HARTZ. 95 

the -window, and the deep-toned clock struck half a score 
from the palace of Brunswick. 

After a ride of some three hours, from Blankenburg, 
w6 came to Riibeland, where are the famous " Biels" and 
" Baumans" caves. I descended into the latter cave, with 
a large party of tourists, encountered on the spot. Each 
person was furnished with a small tin lamp, suspended by 
a wire upon his thumb. The guide informed us that, the 
year before, an American traveller had spent twelve hours 
in exploring its mysteries. The stalactites were of a 
smooth, glossy, dull surface, cold as icicles, and continu- 
ally dropping stony tears. Sometimes they resembled 
huge, leathery, elephant's ears, but more generally were 
long, round, circled, and tapering, like the fabled horn of 
the unicorn. When struck, these petrified water-drops 
returned a harmonious sound. The effect of lights wan- 
dering around, at different heights and depths, in the 
mighty opaque gloom of the cavern, was singular : it was 
like those disconnected and seemingly causeless sparks of 
religious feeling, moving athwart the cavern of the human 
mind, before the sweet light of true piety has streamed 
into it and filled it. As we approached the mouth of the 
cave, the light of day shining in assumed a softened and 
silvery tint, and each person, as he passed out, appeared 
for a moment to be surrounded and etherealized in a man- 
tle of white glory. A few hours' ride from Riibeland, 
through the barren region of Elend (Misery), where the 
opening scene of the May-day-night of Faust is laid, 
brought us to the pleasant village of Ilsenberg, situated 



96 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

upon the plain, and having the Brocken in full view. Here 
I discharged my coachman, with a " trinkgeld." Toward 
evening, I hired a guide, and we started afoot for the 
mountain. We had several miles of plain to traverse be- 
fore we reached its base, and we overtook many peasants 
with baskets on their backs, who, my companion told me, 
were carrying provisions and other articles to the Brocken 
House. " Yes," said he, " the old Brocken feeds many 
mouths." I could not help noticing one of those indirect 
benefits conferred by the poet on his fellow mortals, which, 
like bits of gold, are brought down from the mountains 
of inspiration by his stream of song. Had Goethe 
never written Faust, the Brocken would probably have 
slumbered amid its woods, as wild and as solitary as when 
the Doctor climbed its sides. Now the poem makes the 
mountain renowned ; its renown brings strangers from all 
lands to visit it ; the wants accompanying their visit fur- 
nish an opportunity for many poor people to have em- 
ployment. Yet, how little did the rough guide think of 
this, when he said " the old Brocken feeds many mouths." 
The ascent of the mountain itself, although not along 
an extremely difficult or savage path (for not even Brock- 
en is so high a mountain as Ben Nevis in Scotland, 
or our own Mount Washington), yet the path had enough 
of wildness about it to allow one to feel no disappointment. 
Every rock was covered with thick, deep moss, the trees 
were large and shadowy, and at times, the traversing of a 
mountain ravine, overhung with curtains of dense birch- 
trees and toppling rocks, was through a highly poetical 



THE HARTZ. 97 

gloom. We saw and heard, however, nothing of the super- 
natural on our way. 

We were not guided, like Faust and Mephistopheles, 
by a talkative jack-o'-lantern ; we did not hurry so fast 
that the trees waved, and the rocks bowed their heads and 
blew noisily from their " crag snouts" to greet us ; we did 
not see "Mammon glow within the mountain," nor his 
palace shining for spirit-guests ; we were not forced to 
cling fast to " the old ribs of the rock," when the witch- 
tempest rushed, and crashed, and roared through the 
"green palaces" of Hartz, laying the forest-kings low, 
and the unsanctified rout streaming " over Ilsenstein," 
settled down with hissings, and blarings, on the topmost 
Peak of Brocken. But, when we had clambered above 
the trees, and were approaching the rocky crown of the 
mountain, a veritable and furious tempest of wind and 
rain soaked us to the skin, and brought night and dark- 
ness suddenly upon us. 

In the midst of this elemental war, we suddenly groped 
into the rude stone court of the Brocken-House ; for we 
could not see twenty feet before us. I was ushered into a 
long room, where, to my amazement, were assembled nearly 
fifty persons : ladies, their husbands and brothers, stu- 
dents, musicians, guides, waiters, serving-maids, and sol- 
diers. A good fire crackled in the stove ; and, after get- 
ting thoroughly dried, I was thoroughly drenched again, 
on accompanying the " Herrschaft" out of doors, to view, 
through wind and rain and a faint glimmer of light, the 
" Tantzplatz " of the witches, the witches' " Hand-basin, 



98 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Caldron Altar," &c, fantastic fragments of granite rock, 
which, like gray cairns, encumber the little space of table- 
ground on the top of the mountain, and to which ancient 
traditions and the wild scene of the May-day-night, in 
Faust, have given fantastic particularity. Indeed, this 
very region of the Brocken is the birth-place and cradle- 
ground of German superstition as well as of heroic legend ; 
for the half-deified Hermann, or Arminius, who rolled 
back the wave of Varus's invasion, sprang among these 
mountains. This was the last Christianized spot in the 
whole land ; and, even in the reign of the Emperor Henry 
the Fourth, heathenish fires glowed upon these peaks and 
in these vales. 

When evening had fairly set in, we were summoned to 
a most abounding repast for the culm of a mountain, as if 
very literally " it snewed in his hous of mete and drinke," 
and a perfectly national repast it was, as it should have 
been on the summit of this German Parnassus. But the 
company did not seem to be a merry one, and it was not 
until a violoncello entered, and singing by the whole 
company was proposed, that any thing like sociability 
was seen. Then true German clamor began ; for I have 
rarely seen (as well among the polite and educated as 
among the lower classes) any thing like free and genial 
intercourse, in Germany, without its being accompanied 
by considerable noise : all persons talking at once, and at 
the top of their lungs, so different from the low guarded 
tones of French society, and really expressive of the 
heartiness (gutmuthigkeit) of the German character. 



THE HARTZ. 99 

The singing, which arose by fits and starts, like the 
storm without, was led by a huge and enthusiastic youth, 
a Gottingen Bursch. in a white linen coat and owl-eyed 
spectacles. 

At four o'clock the next morning, a sleepy summons 
sounded through hall and chamber, calling up their in- 
mates to see the sun rise. In a short time, all the 
Herrschaft had collected upon the tall wooden belvidere, 
not far from the low stone Brocken-House ; and, had it 
not been for the real sublimity of the scene around, I 
should have been much amused at the scene at hand ; for 
so blue-complexioned, pinched-faced, shivering set of mor- 
tals will rarely be seen at four o'clock in the morning, on 
the bald pate of a cold mountain, having left their uncom- 
fortable beds to see the sun rise. 

But turn we from the tower and its chattering com- 
pany, to the mountains and sky. The day was not en- 
tirely clear, and a ponderous girdle of black clouds lay 
beneath us, belting the mountain, and shutting out the 
lesser hills and lower world. 

By-and-by a slight tinge of the most delicate rosy light 
blushed around the upper border of the thick clouds, and 
smiled the sun's coming. As if to add more pomp to the 
morning-coronation of the great lord of day, and light, 
and heat, the winds began to swell with a deep roaring, 
like the prophetic sighing of the ocean before a storm, or 
the far-off thundering of Niagara ; and when the sun at 
length appeared, his red disc vastly rose above the rent cur- 



100 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

tains of the clouds, flaming like myriad globes on fire in 
one, and yet more increased by the earthly mists through 
which it rose. I watched its orb, filling with its inflamed 
vapory cincture almost one quarter of the heavens, until 
like a great and good name, it had purged itself from the 
fogs of a base world, and had commenced its unclouded, 
golden sweep to the meridian. I wonder not that the 
ancients, having fallen from God's worship, did next adore 
the sun. 

But I was obliged to descend the mountain betimes, in 
order to take the Diligence for Hartzburg. So, after 
breakfasting, I commenced the descent with my guide. 
Before we were half way down the mountain, the belt of 
clouds in which we were enveloped, unclasped and rolled 
slowly away on either hand, opening before, below, and 
around us, a magnificent panorama. Immediately at our 
feet heaved the rounded and greenly-wooded summits of the 
Hartz Mountains, and beyond them lay the vast flat plain 
of the Baltic, the vision stretching even to the twin towers 
of Magdeburg, dotted with cities and villages, all bright 
and glistening in the cheerful morning beam. The sun's 
rays struck slantingwise into the thick woods, making here 
and there long spots and streaks of golden light upon the 
leaning trees and the mossy rocks. The terrors of 
"old Brocken" had fled ; the scowl had passed from his 
forehead, and all unholy things had vanished with the 
storm, clouds, and darkness. We passed over the 
mountain of Ilsenstein, the way of the witches on 
Walpurgis-eve, where the iron cross had been erected to 



THE HARTZ. 101 

the men who fell for Fatherland in the War of the Lib- 
eration, and we reached the inn of the Rothe Florelle, at 
Ilsenberg, just as the shrill horn of the postilion an- 
nounced the arrival of the diligence, which was to convey 
me out of the Hartz. 



(toiw Utosic, 



GERMAN MUSIC. 

In Leipsic, in the winter season, there are weekly musical 
concerts held, in what is called the " Gewandhaus Saloon." 
Here, in this centre of the musical art in Germany, one 
of the most perfectly practised orchestras in the land, 
perform selections from the great composers. 

I thus, an unskilled one, had a glimpse into the won- 
drous house of Harmony — a little opening of the door 
to catch a moment's outsounding melody. Christopher 
North would, I am sure, have willingly lent me the title he 
himself borrowed, to characterize these " ambrosial even- 
ings." I felt, after every concert, that a fresh world had 
been revealed^ or my ear suddenly unstopped to hear, and 
that a new argument had sprung up, clothed in light, 
breathing in harmony, for the soul's immortality. I had 
an unbound freeness of spirit, that for a little moment 
sweeps purer regions, drinks nobler life, 

"And the dull matter that confined before 
Sinks downward, downward, downward as a dream ! " 

I first learned here of how much higher a grade is that 
music which appeals to the soul, than that which appeals 
G 



L06 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

wholly to the feelings and the passions, or how much su- 
perior the German music is to the modern Italian music. 
I here "became convinced that the grand character of Ger- 
man music was its spiritualness, or intellectuality, or 
power of giving expression to thought. After once listen- 
ing to one of Mozart's exquisite instrumental pieces, my 
friend, who sat by me, asked me what I supposed was the 
idea intended to be illustrated by the piece. I answered 
that it had appeared to be the description of two conflicting 
principles ; as, for instance, the conflict of the princi- 
ples of good and evil in the human soul. Much to my 
surprise, he said that this, or something equivalent was the 
traditionary fact respecting this composition, nor, indeed, 
could one mistake the idea ; for there were, throughout the 
piece, as it were two distinct voices, questioning, answering, 
arguing; at times, one voice storming, thundering, and 
trampling down all control, and then the other soothing, 
pleading, supplicating, in the most winning, the most pa- 
thetic tones, until gradually the controversy became calmer 
and evener, and at last the two voices flowed and blended in 
a delicious accord, chanting triumphantly and purely to- 
gether the final victory of Truth and Holiness. I also 
call to mind an instrumental piece of Beethoven's, in which 
it is said that he desired to represent the coming of deafness 
upon himself : a calamity as fearful to the musician as that 
of blindness to the sculptor or poet. The piece commences 
with an abrupt thunder-peal : something terrible is to be 
announced to him — he listens — the truth is still dark — 
again breaks harshly the summons upon him, and with a 



GERMAN MUSK'. 107 

clearer meaning ; again louder, again clearer, until at length 
the whole measure of his gigantic calamity rolls in upon him 
like a flood, and he cries and wails in despair. But soon 
a ray of hope, trembles in upon him : he gathers courage 
and cheer from the thought that the soul of music lies 
within ; that, when the fleshly ear is closed, he could better 
listen to the spiritual melody — when the groans of mor- 
tality were shut out, he could better catch the harps of the 
angels — and he goes on, giving variety and expansion to 
this thought, gaining confidence and brilliancy as he pro- 
ceeds ; and the whole closes in a strain of magnificent 
harmony. 

The famous choral of Martin Luther, upon the text, 

"Eiri fester Burg ist unser Gott," 

which he is said to have composed while proceeding part 
of the way on foot to the Diet of Worms, illustrates the 
same idea. It is the most religious piece of music I ever 
heard, and breathes a spirit of resignation, spiritual firm- 
ness, sublime trust, worthy of the great errand he was 
then accomplishing. It has since become the German na- 
tional anthem of freedom, civil as well as religious. 

German music has another prominent characteristic 
which would impress the least scientific mind : its vivid 
dramatic quality, or its picturesqueness. One of the 
most memorable examples of this, which I recall, 
was in the " Passion " of Sebastian Bach, perform- 
ed at St. Thomas's Church, in Leipsic. I am quite 
satisfied that Art may not be applied to such themes, which 



108 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

are beyond Art's limits. Reason and taste itself forbids 
the attempt to confine with our weak imaginations the im- 
measurable things that belong to God. During the dark 
ages of the Catholic Church, there are causes enough why 
such attempts should have been made, but now a clearer 
conception of truth should also heighten the awe of it, 
and while it increases the spiritual nearness, it should deep- 
en infinitely the formal distance. Music is less gross than 
painting, but when applied to the last scenes of our 
Saviour's life, it left a painful sense in the heart, surpass- 
ing though its strains were. The Trial scene was repre- 
sented, and the simple narrative of the evangelist is quietly 
and touchingly accompanied, until the words " Crucify 
him ! " cried by the multitude. Then the music suddenly 
changes : it grows dark and turbid ; the notes jar and 
cross each other harshly, confusedly; and, in their 
varied, discordant roar, you seem to see the very pic- 
ture of the blinded and excited people, and you hear 
the mingled cries of old and young, the shrill scream of 
woman, and the hoarse shout of man, now sinking into 
low and threatening murmurs, then rising and swell- 
ing into diabolical violence and loudness. But the whole 
impression was a saddening one, and lowering to the reli- 
gious sense. Another example of picturesqueness, which, 
although of a sacred theme, has none of the painful qual- 
ity, being a subject of less emotional and intimately divine 
character, and rather connected with nature itself, which 
is the true field of Art, is the passage in the " Creation," 
upon the words " Let there be light, and there was light." 



GERMAN MUSIC. IO ( J> 

I heard the oratorio at the Sing Akadamie, in Berlin ; 
and the immense orchestra is perfectly silent upon the 
recitation of these words, until the last word ' : light" is 
uttered ; then it bursts into one magnificent crash of har- 
mony : louder and louder, swifter and swifter, higher and 
higher, so that the light seems to stream up into a very 
blaze of universal and glorious effulgence. It is related, 
that toward the close of Haydn's life, the i: Creation " was 
performed in Yienna, in honor of his birth-day. The 
old man himself was present, and, in this passage of the 
light, the richness and magnificence of his own music com- 
pletely overwhelmed him. With streaming eyes, lifting 
his hands to heaven, he exclaimed : ' : Not from me — it 
came from above ! " 

The great masters of Germany are now generally 
known and appreciated in America. I have spoken of 
Sebastian Bach — perhaps he is the least known of all, in 
America, yet he was a marvellous genius, and, if I be 
rightly informed, is considered in Germany as standing at 
the head of the learned school of music. He has accom- 
plished incredible feats in harmony, evincing such power 
of abstract consecutive thought, as in philosophy would 
have made him a Laplace. Although the arrangement of 
his notes is greatly involved and difficult, yet their united 
harmony is sweet and noble, and the common criticism 
pronounced upon them is, that not one note could have a 
different position without destroying the beauty and sym- 
metry of the whole. It has sometimes appeared to mc, 



110 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

not that too much stress is laid upon the unapproachable 
grace and sweetness of Mozart, but that not enough is con- 
ceded to him of sublimity and power. Often, when least 
expected, his music takes leave of earth, and soars circling 
up the heavens, and again rushes down, like a falling arch- 
angel, into so profound depths, that we start at the bare 
verity of the revelation. But when we discourse of sub- 
limity, spirituality, mightiness of passion, and scope of 
imagination, let room be for the monarch of the lyre ! 
We can describe the ocean until its billows load our own 
sinking ship ; we can sketch pictures of the storm until its 
bolts scorch our own house ; so we can delineate the cha- 
racteristics of the eloquent in Art, until our own minds 
become too absorbed for such calm criticism. And who 
will thus calmly and accurately criticise the music of 
Beethoven ? He who commences, in a critical frame, to 
listen to one of his Symphonies, will, perhaps, at its close, 
be lost to himself. 1 Where has he been? What has he 
been doing ? His mind had, for a time, slipped from the 
obedience of its ruling volition ; it had been seized in the 
grasp of a mightier than itself, and hurried away 
into unknown, far-off, and spiritual realms. While hear- 
ing the current-like, sweeping, ascending, sphery strains of 
Beethoven, as if they were the weaving harmonies of the 
stars that " sang together," at the birth of creation, my 
soul went forth into a .firmament of pure light, ocean-like, 

1 The old Greek word e^iffTTjfxi, to take out of itself, expresses 
the idea. 



GERMAN MUSIC. Ill 

illimitable, bathing itself in billows of sweetness, splendor, 
and glory : was a soul that had forgot all its sins, feeble- 
ness, mortality. I count it with the sight of the High 
Alps, with the greatest things of my life, to have heard 
the music of Beethoven in his own responsive land. 



G* 



DELPHI. 

In company with a glittering-eyed Greek guide, a physical 
Hercules, I landed at the site of ancient iEgium, opposite 
the Crissean sea and the mountains of Phocis, at the spot 
where Plutarch is said to have planted a plane tree with 
his own hands. 

Our abode for the night was a small chamber with 
four large windows, closed with board shutters, and with 
no furniture save an old earthen cooking vessel, which 
stood on the hearth. But this was marvellous quarters 
for poor Greece. "Wrapping myself in an ample Greek 
cloak I slept that night upon the floor of my room. To- 
wards morning I was awakened by the most violent tem- 
pest I ever remember to have beheld. The hail wrapped 
the sky in an icy curtain, crashing and swingiDg over the 
earth, beating us as we lay, through the broken roof. 
The lightning was of vermilion, broadly inflaming all 
things like the red light of Padalon, and the thunder was 
incessant, splitting, and awful, as if Hellenian Zeus had 
awoke from his sleep of ten centuries, and was calling 
in wrath to his old forgetful land. The tempest soon 



116 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

settled into a dark, gusty, sluicing rain, and all hopes of 
crossing the Gulf of Corinth to Delphi for that day was 
idle. At a little deal table, which Andreas procured, I 
spread out my books and papers, but the frail tripod 
trembled at every storm-blast, and the papers were 
whirled and scattered like the leaves of Dodona. 

On the next morning the sky having somewhat light- 
ened, Andreas hired a small craft to take us over the 
Gulf. The wind, however, was feeble, and we were all 
the day making some ten English miles. The sun set 
streamingly magnificent, the clouds trailing around it 
being of a thousand dreamlike shapes, changing their 
golden hues into deepest crimsons and purples, and rolling 
their fiery columns in different directions, like a marching 
barbarian army in vermilion and gold. It was the same 
setting sun which flung its blinding beams into the eyes 
of the astonished Asians, on that eve, when, after the hard 
fought day, victory turned for the Greeks at Marathon. 
A bright light shone here and there upon the stern, bare 
mountains of the Locrian coast, while the rest of their 
surface was swathed in the deep shadow of a tempest gather- 
ing in the northeast, over the monarch tops of Parnassus. 
The sails, the forms of the crew, all objects on board of 
our little vessel were tinged with this solemnly bright 
light, which soon, however, grew dull as the sun dis- 
appeared, and the slow, black thundercloud quenched 
the heavens. The rain began to plash in big drops ; the 
sea commenced to heave and moan, and the boat at the 
irregular blasts which swept by her, careened on her side 



DELPHI'. 117 

and threw the foam seatteringly over the deck. AH 
thought that a tempest similar to the rack which had 
mingled earth and sky on the previous night was again 
to occur. The Peloponnesian sailors grew pale be- 
neath the bronze of their cheeks, and even herculean An- 
dreas lost something of the manly depth of his voice. But 
a change sudden, and in appearance quite mysterious took 
place, and we saw one faint star after another shoot out 
from a thinner curtain of the sky, and then on the far 
edge of the sea horizon, bursting rapidly through the 
clouds, the low swimming moon, as if sailing upon the 
bosom of the sea, stretched her sceptre of long light 
upon the tossing steel-black waves, which seemed to bow 
to the queenly gentle will, and gradually sunk from their 
rage. The wind hushed into sighs and silence, splendid 
stars crowded the firmanent, and there was a glassy calm. 
We drew in nearer shore, and anchored for the night- 
Lying on the open deck, whenever I unclosed my eyes 
during the night, there were the silent stars above, count- 
less, far brighter, though serener than in our mistier At- 
lantic skies, each star a moon of light, and within the 
shadow of the great mountains which circle Delphi, and un- 
der the very sacred peaks of Parnassus, I felt the influence 
of the old Greek mountain nature harmonizing, as nature 
sometimes does, profoundly with the mind, and, of all kinds 
of nature, over my own mind, mountains have the great- 
est sway.- Mountains were the inspiration of the 
ancient muse of G-recce, as Parnassus now silently attest- 
ed. They have the power q{ ever changing life. There 



118 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

is something like the moods of a powerful spiritual 
life in mountains, which was not lost on the suscep- 
tible Greek mind, for mountains, whether in G-reece or 
Switzerland, are never the same ; every day, and every 
hour in the day brings upon them some impressive change ; 
as belonging more to heaven than earth, they seem, in 
certain states of the air to soar spiritualized, transcenden- 
tal, emptied of bulk, and floating in space : then again, 
towards night, or under the frown of storms, they become 
black, ponderous, oppressive to the soul, the equilibriums of 
the planet and the thrones of power j then they laugh and 
flash in the full noon sun, vast altars of light and happi- 
ness ; at times the clouds play grotesque tricks with them, 
dragging their enormous serpentine shadows over them, 
or wreathing themselves around their peaks like vapory 
garlands in the slow dance of gigantic spirits of air ; then 
the whirling mist sweeps on like a spirit host, and in a 
moment the great forms grow dim and fade away ; and 
then again the curtain of vapor parts in enormous rifts, 
showing portions of the wet sombre mountain from base 
to peak. But now it was a serene and solemn scene ; the 
still stars glittering around the silvered and distant top 
of Parnassus, like a diadem, — like Poesy crowned with 
Immortality. 

The next morning found us still becalmed, but by dint 
of hard rowing at the sweeps, we rounded into the little 
bay of Salona, at whose head we disembarked, where once 
stood the ancient populous Cirrha. The scenery here 
was of unrelieved loneliness. The mountains were bare of 



DELPHI. 119 

all vegetation, excepting a kind of short red heath, that 
gives a scorched look to the rock, as if a huge fire had 
swept over the mountain, Add to this red-tinted rock 
and mountain, the water wherever it is seen, of the most 
intense sparkling blue, beyond even that of permitted art, 
and a sailless gleaming waste, and let all be still and 
solemn, with no sound of men, rushing of prows, lowing 
of cattle, singing of birds, and one may have a tolerable 
idea of much of Grecian scenery at this day. In Attica, 
the scenery has a more gentle pensiveness ; the wild bar- 
renness is softened by gleams of beauty shining through 
the shroud of death and desolation. There appears still 
a hidden promise of power in the wan and wasted features, 
if indeed it be not a divine law that a land flowers but 
once, and that the very causes of its decay exist to pre- 
vent those perfect combinations which result in greatness. 
The contrast of the past and present, and the poetry and 
power of the antique, moved me more in Greece than in 
Italy ; Greece has a more pathetic beauty than Italy, 
wholly yielded up as it is to nature and glorious mem- 
ory. But the land, it must be said, as a general thing, is 
a truly savage land ; and the Greeks themselves, out of 
the few larger towns, are as savage as their land, and there 
is apparently the least of tractability in them, nor would it 
seem as if their fierce, bright, flashing eyes could be soft- 
ened any more than the wild panther's. The lonely 
muleteer or herdsman whom you meet upon the mountain 
path, looks at you with a malign expression, and in coun- 
try and town, from shepherd to areopagite, the hand is 



120 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

right gracefully accustomed to grasp the inseparable pis- 
tol or dagger. But the modern Greeks have wrought their 
own freedom, and a shadow of dignity and sublimity has 
thus fallen upon them, rendering them sacred from a nar- 
row and fastidious condemnation. 

To come back to the little bay of Salona. We pro- 
cured horses at our place of landing to carry us on and up 
to Delphi, the owners of them accompanying us, and stri- 
ding along by our side in the hot sun, clad in shaggy sheep- 
skins after the old Dorian fashion. We first traversed a 
long ascending plain, patched with the wild olive tree, and 
then commenced climbing the mountain upon the Corin- 
thian track to Delphi. We stopped and drank at the 
fountain of Crissa, the classic name retained — 

"Python the rocky, Crissa the divine." 

As we approached the site of Delphi, the marks of 
the old Delphian chariot way were visible, bearing us 
back by a leap, ten hundred years or so. Upon a sudden 
turn in this zigzag, rock-cloven path, we saw the site of 
Delphi before us under a symmetrically curving mountain 
wall, sloping down into a grandly deep and sombre gorge. 
We stopped at a little kahn, kept by a Turkish woman 
who had turned Christian, the few houses on the spot tak- 
ing the name of the village or demos of Castri. The ancient 
City of the Oracle was reared upon a series of broad am- 
phitheatrical terraces still remaining, cut in the living 
rock, and helped by huge masonry, as if done for eternity. 
It is a gloomy, mountainous, rugged and commanding 



DELPHI. 121 

spot, a place of serpents and eagles, of mist, thunder, 
and rushing winds ; a colossal rock-based throne of old 
heathen power, where broad shadows sleep, and the stern 
mountains keep watch around, where one does not feel 
like smiling, or talking, but like dreaming, and his dreams 
will be of a gigantic ante-world of Silence and" old Night," 
of Uranos and Cronos, of wide-browed Saturn, huge as 
Athos, and of Prometheus bleeding on his crag. In the 
centre of the mountain wall, which rises perpendicularly 
and blackly behind the sloping plain of the city, stand 
two lofty adelphic peaks, between which, slides down the 
Castalian spring. From the narrow fissure which divides 
these two immense rocks or mountains, as if split by a 
shattering blow of Poseidon, about half up their summit, 
come streaming forth over the smooth channelled marble, 
the sweet cool waters that once bestowed the gift of pro- 
phecy. The mountain from which it flows, may perhaps 
by a poetic license, be called the base of Parnassus, but 
it is a long distance from the real mountain, which is not 
indeed visible from it. There is still the ancient cistern 
or reservoir hollowed from the rock, which gathered the 
inspiring waters. A little way down from this, on the 
first great terrace of the rocky plain, once shone against 
the gloomy back-ground of mountain, the magnificent fane 
of Apollo, fronted with purest Parian marble, the archi- 
traves hung around with the golden bucklers taken at 
Marathon, the pediments ornamented with statues of the 
sister of Apollo, the Muses and the Thyades, containing in 
its inner eella the great gilded statue of Phoebus Apollo, 
and in the pillared hall the sculptured image of old 



122 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Homer, crowded with the grandest works of art. with gods, 
demigods, and heroes, with the original of the Apollo Belvi- 
dere breathing in triumph, enshrining the ancient golden 
tables, and the most sacred relics of the religion of Greece, 
as the temple on Mount Moriah, reverently to make the com* 
parison, held the ark, the candlestick, the rod, and the shew- 
bread, and collecting from age to age the riches of the 
Hellenic faith in a tangible form, until the incredible sum 
of them inflaming the imagination of the Greeks, at length 
burst through the spiritual awe, and kindled the rolling 
fires of sacred wars. But for ages anterior, back to an 
unrecorded antiquity, Delphi formed the only point of 
moral unity amid the strongly repulsive tribes and states 
of Greece, or was the highest spiritual peak in Greece ; 
the only one serenely above the storms of passion, interest 
and conflict. 1 

Here was the holiest seat of the Greek religion, its 
mount of vision, its heavenly communion, its throne of 
prophecy, which indeed rose sublimely before the spirit- 
ual eye of all the Pagan world, and from the remotest re- 
gions formed the great centre of pilgrimage, offering and 
adoration. Delphi was the common seat of the universal 
mythical religion of antiquity. 2 Even before the legen- 
dary age of Edipus, before the song of Troy itself swept 

1 Even to the time of the first Peloponnesian war, the first article 
of the treaty of peace between Athens and Sparta, was that Athens 
might enjoy untrammelled, all the privileges of the temple, oracles* 
and sacred games. — Grote. 

2 to iepov koivov — Strabo. — Tpnroda noivov. — Euripides. Com- 
mune humani generis oraculum. — Livy. — DodweWs Greece, 



DELPHI. 123 

on the shell of the Homeric hymn, the oracle of Delphi 
gave dark response, moulding the fates of men, families, 
cities and nations, and ruling the policy of Greece itself, 
to draw another comparison of the true and the false, as 
Horeb and Carmel ruled the civil policy of Israel. Here 
the leaders of still unconquered armies, laying aside the 
helm, awaited in pale prostration the mysterious announce- 
ment of glory or defeat, life or death. Here Rome came 
and bent her august head, feeling in her gigantic heart 
some faint shoots and pangs of a religious aspiration, 
confusedly and secretly acknowledging a will higher than 
her own ; and can it be doubted that the religious feeling, 
original faculty, sense or emotion, which binds man to 
God and to a superior spiritual awe and obligation, — 
the inborn principle of natural religion, was really 
stirred and drawn upon in the worship of Delphi ; and we 
would even hope that a beam of the supernatural however 
distorted, a sense of the divine however false, a trust of 
superior power concerning itself for inferior humanity 
however dim, an evidence of " the feeling after God" how- 
ever blind, trembled on these hoary shrines, piercing gol- 
denly through their crimson writhing smoke, — or that 
their philosophy was self-deception rather than fraud, de- 
lusion rather than the linking together of generations and 
centuries to nurture a solemn deceit and utter a lie. 
Undeniably the ancient heathen world, at least until the 
philosophic age, believed that Apollo, a divine being, here 
slew the Pytho, and founded at Delphi his own especial 
dwelling, as the revealer of unknown things to men. 



124 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

The explanations which Plutarch gives us of the Py- 
thian Oracles, might indeed apply to one lower, looser 
view of inspiration itself, that not the language nor the 
measure of the verse proceeded from the god, but that 
God communicated the intuitions, and kindled up a light 
in the human soul on the future. The evidence, however, 
of some of the best of the heathen is decidedly opposed even 
to the sincerity itself, of the oracles. Demosthenes declared 
in a public oration, that the oracle of Delphi, the most 
sacred of all, had been bought over to Philip ; and many en- 
tirely credible ancient writers have spoken out boldly of the 
shrines being invented and supported wholly by human 
craft; and when power is grasped in any age through the 
spiritual susceptibility, it is not easily let go. Christianity 
alone, by her moral brightness and truth, has chased Apollo 
to far realms beyond the rim of the outer world-ocean. She 
has banished him as a god then and now, has burned and 
consumed his marble altar ; but his lyre she has strung 
again, and wakes it to strains awful and sweet as the 
heavenly thundering of Dante, the organ tones of Milton, 
the mountain melodies of Wordsworth. The only Pytho- 
ness whom I saw at Delphi, was a raven-haired Castriote 
maiden, a priestess of simple nature, who, with a water- 
pitcher on her classic head, looked at me with eyes full of 
dark wonder, that a stranger should examine so curiously 
the gently singing spring, whence she and her mother be- 
fore her had all their lives drawn pure earthly water 
without having one pang of superior life. I plucked 
a leaf from a century-twisted olive tree that thrust its 



DELPHL 125 

strong struggling arms up through the antique fragments 
of the temple ; and the man in whose crown of honor I 
would weave it, is that noble fellow-countryman who has 
carried to the land of Apollo the pure faith of the Gospel, 
and in suffering has interpreted there the lively " Oracles 
of God." 



IftntSSSttS. 



PAKNASSUS. 

Delphi is lone, low and incomplete without Mount Par- 
nassus, the cloudy birthspot of the prophetic spring, the far 
skyey dwelling of the uttered inspiration. The morning 
when we started for the Mount of Song, was clear star 
light, and the sky was bright, but when we had penetrated 
into the inner foldings of the mountains, a sudden and 
almost total blackness came over the heavens, so that our 
craggy path was revealed only by scarlet gleams of light- 
ning. It is quite impossible to give an idea of the thun- 
der and lightning of Greece, where mountain, sea, and 
sun are so mingled together as to form a vast electrical 
machine, over which an almost continual flashing plays 
and we wonder not that the vivid Greek mind read in the 
lightning and thunder the tremendous world-expression of 
Olympian emotion. "VVe struggled on for about an hour in 
this tempest, the rain falling in sheets, until we reached some 
low stone uninhabited hovels of the mountain shepherds, 
where a knot fire and a cold breakfast restored our spirits, 
and as morning began to break, the storm gradually ceased 5 
and we mounted our horses amid the slow-falling golden 
7 



130 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

rain-drops, which the sun darted through. makiDg the 
whole earth glisten, 

"Turning with splendor of his precious eye 
The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold," 

and the last low roars of the thunder died away in the 
far Thessalian valleys. It was a perfect crystal morning, 
a day as of the time when the human eye saw the chariot 
of Apollo in the sun, the quick flash of the divine wheels 
in every broken ray — the toss of the golden-maned steeds 
in every shimmer of light ; and the exulting hope of a 
fine view from Parnassus — so seldom granted — animated 
me greatly. Two hours sharp riding over a difficult path, 
brought us to the foot of the mountain, near the summit 
of which is the Cave of Corycia, the old habitation of the 
god Pan. Near the mouth of the cavern, three or four 
great white stalactites hanging from the roof like gigan- 
tic teeth, standing out against the pitch gloom beyond, 
form a curious earth-throat, and make a fit home for so 
grotesque a being ; the ancient body of what was wild 
and capricious, yet not on the whole unkind in nature. 

We at length descended into the broad but low plain, 
upon whose opposite side rose grandly, and swellingly ab- 
rupt, the immense bulk of Parnassus ; a mountain of light- 
colored limestone, still further whitened, sublimed and 
glorified in the intense light of the heavens ; a mountain 
with a long ridgy back, indented toward its northern ex- 
tremity with a deep hollow like the seat of an oriental 
saddle, which is terminated in a somewhat bolder and 



PARNASSUS. - 131 

loftier peak, giving the bicepted aspect attributed to it by 
the poets, and in which the Latins follow the Greeks with 
their usual docility. After racing over the plain, and 
climbing up the lower gentler slopes of Parnassus, we 
dismounted in a grove of beech trees, and a Castriote war- 
beaten herdsman and myself commenced climbing the 
mountain on foot. Our way lay at first in easier ascent, 
through idyllic scenery — whole parks of bending vener- 
able beech, pine, and evergreen oak trees — gray monu- 
mental looking rocks lifting themselves out of the living 
green of the plain, hiding shadowy ivy-tangled briery- 
mouthed caves — clear rapid brooks slipping over the 
bending unworn grass, and in truth, here and there a 
shepherd, with a crook, tending his long-haired Parnas- 
sian goats. Soon, however, the scenery grew more soli- 
tary, wild, stern, with trees cropped by the avalanche — 
precipices deep and huge, — shattered shaggy segments of 
the mountain — savage gorges bristling with haggard pine ; 
vegetation at last wholly ceased ; and we emerged upon 
the bare great neck of the mountain, above all the lower 
gods of fields, streams, and forests, in the company of the 
grand Olympians alone, paying for the insane ambition, by 
crawling like wounded worms slowly and wearily up the 
far-shooting height, over sharp-edged and loosely detached 
stones, which lacerating the feet, rendered the climbing 
almost as laborious as that of any loftier Swiss or other 
mountain I ever ascended. It was almost like an elonga- 
ted scorified cone of Vesuvius. The sun, too, was devour- 
ingly hot, but as we gained by hard and panting exertion, in 



132 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

which the dark face of my old soldier guide grew darker, 
higher and higher points of elevation in the transparent 
heaven of Greece, and at last after some two hours from 
leaving our companions, conquered the soaring peak — -all 
weariness vanished " like a dream when one awaketh," 
at a hitherto self-denied glance of the panorama, stretched 
as if in infinite lines of vividest light below us. I felt 
upon me, in truth, an inspiration. I was on the throne of 
the king of the lyre — song was in my heart, and I grasped 
for the lyre, but its tortoise shell and golden chords, were 
but the streaming dazzling beams of the noonday sun ! 

On the high point which we had attained, we looked 
directly off the back of Parnassus, as off a broken angle 
of the world — a tremendous precipice sheer and awful 
from the diminished Lycorean plain, unlike the more 
slanting iEtolian side of the mountain, up which we had 
clambered. Instead of two peaks, I saw that Parnassus 
had claims to five or six — Parnassus being only one of the 
Pindus chain, which embraces also Helicon and Cithaeron, 
and runs even to the extremity of the Attic Cape. Indeed, 
the one grand impression of the land of Greece from any 
commanding summit like Parnassus, is that of its dark, 
corrugated, mountainous character. In every direction 
swell the black humps of the higher peaks, woven together 
by numberless ramifications of lower ridges, leaving no 
great area unintersected. The whole of Greece proper is 
a knotty conglomeration of mountain systems, orossing 
and interlocking, and thus forming skyey walls around 
little territories, making those haughty little states of old, 



PARNASSUS. 133 

and as effectually separating them as if seas rolled be- 
tween. A second almost equally strong impression of the 
land, is its greatly irregular ocean-coast, its singular deep 
indentations, where the narrow sea lies in the very arms 
of the land, thus openiDg a vast surface of coast for so 
small a country. This has often been noticed in its re- 
lation to the formative influences upon the antique Hel- 
lenic character, giving that nation the fluent, progressive, 
energic stamp of a people maritime by the decree of na- 
ture. Toward the north of us, clear in the brilliant opal 
atmosphere, lay the purple mountains of Thessaly, with 
majestic old Olympus — 

iroAvSelpas, aydwupos, elvocrupvAAos 'OhvfAiros, 

and the interval or bay in the mountains where was 
Thermopylae ; on the north-west, the oceanlike Alps of 
Epirus ; on the north-east, the island of Euboea, and the 
strip-like silver of the intervening sea ; towards the south- 
east, the more indistinct iEgean, and the land of Attica ; 
on the south, the mountains of Peloponnesus, culminating 
in the distant Taygetus ; the blue gulf of Cornith glitter- 
ing immediately below ; Mount Helicon near at hand ; and 
far away toward the south-east, the hazy Ionian sea, and 
the eye almost strained to catch the lone galley of Ulysses 
sailing that dim ocean. This is the noblest prospect in 
all the land of Greece, because Parnassus stands in the 
very centre of the land, and is the highest summit except- 
ing Olympus. Here, with the easy conquest of a glance, 
one holds the entire earth, whose name has been enough 



134 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

to wake the world when it grows slavish, sensual, stupid ; 
whose arts have begotten art ; whose sons' blood sublimed 
the battle field before the celestial battles of Peace were 
known ; whose literature wraps a germ of immortality, 
and whose transparent tongue was thought by the Spirit of 
God worthy to be the medium of illumination from God to 
man. And the superior intellectual world still lives in 
and through Greece ; and in Divine wisdom this rocky 
peninsula was intended to play its ineffaceable part in 
the mental history of our race, and. a brighter, broader, 
and more pregnant glance of God's eye fell upon, and 
quickened these sea-washed rocks, and from them sprung 
keen and winged spirits, which now reign in all the intel- 
ligent affairs of men, at the hearth, the school, the study, 
the desk, the tribune, the senate, making Greece still the 
ideal intellectual centre of the world (as Delphi was the 
physical, where met the wide-winged eagles of Zeus flown 
in different directions from heaven), to which as the 
true and absolute standard, all works purely artistic, or 
which are the expressions of the pure thought-power, the 
art of evolving the true, must be brought, which is the 
final home of the worker in pure thought, so that as 
well as Eschylus, Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, also Milton, 
Schiller, Leibnitz, Webster, are real Grecians. But the 
splendor and joys of the actual light of the scene was not 
long allowed to me a barbarian, for a valley-born cloud 
whirled up the sides of the mountain, and with its misty 
brush dashed out the glorious land of Hesiod, Leonidas 
and Demosthenes, whose mountains rise also upon spirit- 



PARNASSUS. 135 

ual plains, that cannot be dimmed ; and I descended the 
veiled throne of Song in carefulness and in fog, having 
neither become an inspired poet, nor mad. 1 

1 With the ancients, an ascent of Mount Parnassus, involved one 
of these consequences. 



%\}t felt ItaL 



THE GKREEK IDEAL. 

When a few days after the ascent of Parnassus, I saw the 
sun kindling its morning fires on the magnificent altar- 
crag of Acrocorinthus, and walked around the thin skele- 
ton of the ancient stadium of Corinth — from which the 
Apostle Paul drew those strenuous metaphors, " We are 
made a spectacle (a theatre) unto the world, and to angels, 
and to men," — " Know ye not that they which run in a 
race (in the stadium) run all, but one receiveth the prize? 
— And every man that striveth for the mastery is temper- 
ate in all things 1 Now they do it to obtain a corruptible 
crown, but we an incorruptible," — I felt that here, where 
Paul had lived a year and a half, and looked upon this same 
impressive nature, as he went forth daily from the low 
tent-maker's roof to call the dreamy crowds of the wor- 
shippers of mountain gods and concrete passions, to recog- 
nise the one spiritual Grod in the sublime works of his 
hands ; doubtless using that noble argument penned in 
Corinth, u For the invisible things of him from the crea- 
tion of the world are clearly seen, being understood by 
the things that are made, even his eternal power and God- 



140 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

head, so that they are without excuse," — that here, even 
the poetic light of Greece faded ; and here, great Parnas- 
sus sunk and vanished away. Here was a spot where the 
false and true encountered and stood over against each 
other in simultaneous and very strong contrast, — the old 
Naturalism, the quick offspring of doubt, which was the 
child of sin, and born just without the gate of Eden, — 
the fear of the power of nature, the determination to dis- 
believe all but the near, visible, physical, empirical, and 
to worship nature (or the created world), as containing 
within itself the original energy, the normal idea, as evolv- 
ing all things, as divine, — the fallen pantheism of the 
God-forsaken soul and imagination, whether lighting the 
hill-top idolatry of Assyrian Baal, or kindling the uni- 
versal fire of Persia, 1 or glooming in the mighty temples 
of Egypt or India, or playing and flashing in the more 
beautiful muse and splendid art of the Greeks, — this, in 
its imbecile, human, and even impure character, stood in 
Corinth, opposed to the piercing earnestness, spiritual 
purity, deep joyfulness. ineffable love, and divine stamp 
and image of the religion of Jesus Christ. The epistle of 
the inspired tent-maker to this little church at Corinth, 
which I read near by those three granite columns of the 
only standing temple, whose very name is lost, exhaled a 
deeper fulness of the divine life than ever before. The 
spirit-breathed exhortations to unity, humility, love, dis- 

1 Herodotus. Clio. B. I. Layard's researches also lead us to 
suppose that the Persians pantheized more generally and largely 
than all the other mythologists. 



THE GREEK IDEAL. 141 

trust in mere human wisdom, the spiritual mind, to bring- 
ing every thought to the obedience of Christ, to striving 
after an incorruptible crown — the sublime announcements 
of the resurrection of the dead, the inconceivable triumph, 
the moral perfection, the holy and bright eternity, — what 
" foolishness to the Greek," who trembled before the 
cloudy voice of Delphi, in which darkness rather than 
light was chosen, who gloried in strife, clashing philoso- 
phies, human wisdom for its own sake, the delights of the 
senses served by the skilful enslaved reason, earthly hon- 
ors and oaken crowns, and in fierce contempt of other 
men ; who suffered his own poets to create his theology, 1 and 
who held the present life to be the real, the life to come 
the unreal. We speak of and admire the religion of the 
ancient Greeks, as we would discourse of and admire a 
beautiful work of art ; we philosophize upon the origin of 
the myths, and draw them forth from that deep fount of 
human religions, the naturalistic tendency in the mind in 
all ages, or the blind, groping desire to find God in the 
outer world having lost him in the inner soul, reason, 
heart, modified among the Greeks only by the more deli" 
cate, as well as more fervid conceptive personifying power 
of this intellectual race ; nor do we scruple to admire, nor 
do we fear to yield ourselves wholly to the power of the 
Hellenic genius ; nor do we hesitate to mount the rapid 
chariot of old Homer, not asking whether those great 

forms who led 

"The Trojan dance of war," 

1 Herodotus. Clio. 



142 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

lit up by his touch of fire, were real or no ; nor do we 
shrink from entering the irrevocable iron portals of the 
sounding, desolate, and grand moral fane of iEschylus, for 
the Greek myth is dead, and it has no inherent power over 
the soul, although the poet may call it back, and the theo- 
philanthropist may revive its graceful flower-rites, and its 
beautiful idea may be set in exquisite light and shade by 
the genius of Goethe, or coldly idolized again by Hume, 
or eloquently re-deified by the modern votary of nature 
without God and as God, or as if God were not " above na- 
ture, before nature, and the author of nature." Though 
the Grecian myth is dead, its fount still lives in the hu- 
man mind, and sends up its puny waters even under the 
golden sun of a Christian revelation of the true and spirit- 
ual God. Sad is it that the very pure loveliness of God's 
natural works manifesting Him, should tempt to His ob- 
scuration ; should minister to that philosophy which, with- 
out spiritual awe, beholds in nature, and in man as merely 
natural, the whole God ; which thus converses with the 
Infinite without humility ; which sees a heart-cleansing 
faith in a landscape or a wheat-field. This philosophy 
turns aside the true currents of nature, and stagnates 
them on the earth ; whereas, they should run on to a 
deeper and spiritual faith, and make even that faith sweeter, 
for when the mind once becomes pure and holy, nature un- 
folds to it mysteries, as when a lake grows perfectly still, 
the most delicate and lofty heavens shine in it. Nature 
has been truly called ;: God's art," and all the expressions 
of divine ideas are worthy our reverent loving study, and 



THE GREEK IDEAL. 143 

that study will always refresh and purify our spirits. 
Nature draws to better and simpler tastes, and he has 
something wrong in him, who cannot enjoy and be in- 
spired by her. It is only, as has been hinted, when our 
evil desires are laid to rest, and our fevered hearts pulse 
tranquilly, and when we are at real peace with God, that 
nature yields to us her most exquisite delights, and then 
a simple solitary walk in the sunshine, or under the bless- 
ing palms of stately trees with the still air around like 
the courts above, is quite enough to make a good man 
heavenly-minded. To sit in the summer woods on an old 
decayed tree-trunk and muse, is pleasure enough to him 
who loves G-od, and all the works that He has made. The 
yellow butterflies that tremble around him in their brief 
life-ecstasies, are types of his own mortality. The bees 
drive impetuously into the thistle-flowers, gold-hunters 
spending their thewy strength for burdensome riches. 
Clinging to the old trunk are the cast-off shells and larvae 
of bright insects, perhaps even now glancing in the sun, — 
death and a higher life ! Along comes the stately meas- 
uring-worm with his regular advances, like the wise man 
who looks before he takes a step ; and the fiery wasp that 
at last drives him away, is the little care which stings 
and troubles more than the great affliction, slowly crush- 
ing. Thus nature draws our cares from us with her gentle 
wiles, and pours peace into our minds like a cooling wave, 
and throws around Religion a sister arm, helping her 
faint feet along the road ; but had not the trembling hope 
of a deeper peace and a holier joy dawned upon our soul, 



144 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

nature itself were vain and superficial to give us this high 
hope and pure joy. Jonathan Edwards, rude as he was 
in his Connecticut forests in the finer studies of nature 
and art, found himself melted to tears by the sight of a 
little pure white flower growing on the banks of the river. 
But the stainless heavens themselves, are not enough to 
brighten and cleanse the wicked heart ; and the great 
mountains which touch the cope of the sky like thoughts 
of heavenly might, and the valleys sunk between like 
humble, sweet, and contrite feelings, will not create those 
holy resolves, nor lead to that real repentance. The bars 
of flaming ruby and gold, which close the portals of even- 
ing, though they may have shut in the soul to wonder and 
dreams, never yet barred out beautiful temptation to the 
unrenewed mind, nor shut it up to the wonderful simpli- 
city of Faith. Nature cannot satisfy Faith. Nature may 
reveal her utmost depths, but still the great cry of Bil- 
dad the Shuhite goes up from the abyss of man's spirit — 

" How then can man be justified with God ? 
Behold even to the moon and it shineth not; 
Yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. 
How much less man." 

The susceptibility to beauty and grandeur, God-im- 
planted though it be, is yet essentially different from 
the religious susceptibility, the conscience, the will, the 
spirit, " the inner man " of the Holy Spirit's renovation. 
Spirit is different from nature, even as God is essentially 
and infinitely distinct from the finite nature which he has 
made. He inspires this nature, but he is not mingled in 



THE GREEK IDEAL. 145 

it. The natural in the Scriptures is no less philosophi- 
cally than clearly distinguished from the spiritual. Reli- 
gion needs a deeper foundation and a higher impulse than 
nature, God-radiant, pure, powerful, refining though it 
be. "Would the Christian religion with its surpassing 
appeal to the susceptibility of beauty and grandeur in the 
mind, ever be admired like the naturalistic Grecian myth 
as a thing of mere beauty, or of idealized nature or art, 
should the wisdom of man see fit to pass it over and reject 
it ? I even conjecture that it would be cursed sooner than 
eulogized, that notwithstanding its heavenly sublimity and 
divine grace, it would be carefully unmolested, scrupulously 
unmentioned, its Faith sealed with the royal seal, and its 
Book drowned 

"Deeper than did ever plummet sound," 

lest the very whisper of its name should start it again into 
life, and its strong embrace fall a second time upon the 
conscience, and drag it like a criminal into the daylight of 
reason and before the judgment-seat of God. Nature will 
grow deeper in the loving reverence and profound study 
of man as the true manifestation of God, and science 
will become more religious and vitalized with faith ; but 
why continually re-enact the old Greek tragedy of the 
idolatry of the natural. It can never probably be more 
beautifully dramatized than by the Greek mind, for the 
moral difference recognized, the gulf between the human 
and the divine seen, it is marvellous how the genius of 
this far the greatest people of antiquity — the Romans by 



146 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

no means excepted — sublimed and vitalized their idea of 
religion. The State erected itself into strength through the 
mutual amphyctionic councils of religion. The sacred pan- 
hellenic games bound all Greece together in a golden moral 
bond, where healthy deeds were stimulated and the mus- 
cle was swelled to its perfect proportion until Phidias 
had his model, where reverence to law was encouraged, as 
no law-breaker could stand in the arena, and where the strife 
of mind, keener and nobler than that of the stadium, bore 
up an entire people on beating, struggling wings, and great 
ideals of thought and action passed before the eye of the whole 
nation. The poet, nature's priest, making religion the ali- 
ment of his thought, the hidden fire of his enthusiasm, in- 
sensibly clothed the created forms of nature with a kind of 
aesthetic divinity, so that they rose from the law of mental 
weakness, and seemed and moved like gods, hardly know- 
ing that Parnassus and Olympus made the gods whom they 
throned. The artist agonizing to draw out from the 
mystery of nature her sacred powers, penetrated thus into 
her most concealed laws, and really grasped the ideal, 
the pure original idea in the form, — so that the Greek artist 
has never been equalled, so that the modern sculptor, 
Canova himself, vainly strives even to imitate — so that 
although modern artists measure the proportions of Greek 
temples, and construct exact models and formulas from 
them, they never rise to that exquisite adaptation of na- 
ture, place, and idea, that made one Greek edifice to differ 
from every other — so that in the most marred and diminu- 
tive structure, even that little choragic monument of 



THE GREEK IDEAL. 147 

Lysicrates, which lifts its beauteous head out of the coarse 
and heavy ruins of the Franciscan Convent at Athens 
beams with an unquenched light and harmony of the Greek 
conception, and this is seen consummated in the Parthe- 
non that speaks to the mind even more than the eye, prov- 
ing that its builder felt its idea, and appealed to the 
subjective in the beholder, ever the sublimest appeal. 
Viewing it a few days after my visit to Corinth, I was 
wonderfully impressed with its power of exciting the 
emotion of grandeur, while comparatively so small in size. 
It is a purely ideal grandeur. Really nothing as it is, 
compared with the vastness of Egyptian and Roman 
structures, it is yet like an eternal edifice, with every part 
entirely sustained, even as its intellectual parallel, the 
Oration on the Crown, both of them the pure expression 
of strong, condensed and finished mind ; and sadly broken 
as it is, prophetic of speedy ruin, with the great gap in the 
centre of it, and the pediment swaying down between the 
aged columns with grievous cracks, it yet appears perfect, 
for the beholder builds it again with its own kindling 
inspiration. 

That well-known antique bust of Demosthenes, in its 
Greek countenance, and its unconscious idealization of 
nature, the intense, even painful thought of the brow, 
mingled with the serene, almost childlike expression of 
the eyes and the rest of the features, finely expresses the 
mingled simplicity and power of the Greek genius. And 
where is there in all art, before or since, the instinctive 
nature, the vitalizing idea, the hazardous conception, 



148 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

that lives in the pain of the Laocoon ! The reach and 
strain of that old man, from the hand that grasps and 
bends the serpent in the air, to the opposite foot which in 
its convulsive agony grasps the ground, brings in play 
every great action of the human frame. The dreadful 
fangs fasten on the body, just where a bite lets out the 
soul. The forehead of Laocoon, ribbed with anguish, the 
speechless mouth speaking a thousand groans, are of a 
father perishing with his children, of a patriot expiring 
with his falling country, overwhelmed by that very sover- 
eignty of mind which lifted him to the lonely throne of 
the celestial anger. He who has seen that sublime old 
man, may almost bear all agony himself. Modern art is 
cold, powerless, dead, compared with these bold and mighty 
Singings of ideal life and action into the marble. How repose, 
instead of action, can be insisted upon as the great charac- 
teristic of Greek art, I know not. Even in the repose of 
the stillest attitude, there is ever the action of a living 
nature, sentiment, idea. And why should Pagan art thus 
have produced in the Apollo of Delphi, copied in the 
Apollo of the Vatican. 1 the Ideal man ? This can only 
be solved by supposing that the soul, though darkened by 
false religion, has never been without some conception of 
its ideal or perfect self, some haunting memory of its 
divine origin and image, some desire and struggle to em- 
body this idea, and it fell upon the sculptor of the Apollo 
to unite this conception with the most perfect skill sub- 

1 Canova's opinion. 



THE GREEK IDEAL. 149 

limed by a religious emotion. And in Art, the religious 
ideal of the Hellenic genius, combining and heightening the 
natural, reached its most clustering successful fruit and form, 
but not its greatest strife and agony. The Greek Philosophy 
is still the great type of the painfully inworking Ideal 
Philosophy. Plato is still its master, whatever may be its 
new forms of discovering the fundamental laws of being 
and of all things in that interior consciousness of the 
mind itself, in which all objects created or uncreated are 
viewed. The Greeks are the originals, the real teachers 
of the deep-musing philosophers of Germany ; who have 
opened imperial chambers in the palace of mind, the cham- 
bers of the Ideal, but who have accompanied their magni- 
ficent discoveries in some eminent instances with a vanity 
and deifying of man, destructive of humility and religion, 
and with a vague pantheism, or a " contemplation of God 
merely as Nature and Thought," and not as conscious 
Spirit and personal Being, more profoundly culpable than 
the Greek pantheism, because committed against the 
light. It is related of Socrates, that the breath of the 
great oracle of Delphi had gone forth declaring him to be, 
in the face of the world, the wisest of men. Though stag- 
gered at this announcement, he could not dispute the god, 
for he was a devout man ; but he immediately commenced 
to test the oracle. Every man whom he met, who had the 
reputation of wisdom of any kind, he drew from him by 
wary and searching questions, the amount and limit of 
his wisdom, thus soon satisfying himself of the shallowness 
of human wisdom. In this manner the scrutinizing 



150 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

' elenchus ' grew up into the Socratic system ; and would 
not Socrates, the most nobly and disinterestedly practical 
of all speculatists, who directly or indirectly would work 
out for his fellow-men the problem of human happiness, 
who questioned in order to approach the real, who confuted 
in order to gain the juster conclusion, who sifted and sepa- 
rated only to press toward the surer result, and who 
actually came nearest of all unenlightened mind, before or 
since, to the truth of Divine Revelation, that " the wis- 
dom of men is foolishness with God," and that therefore 
even in the most bitter self-knowledge there is the only 
humble beginning of wisdom, — would not this Socrates, the 
wisest of the Greeks who were the wisest of the heathen, 
the greater teacher of great Plato, the father of phi- 
losophy, " plank from the wreck of paradise," crown of 
the natural, who died sayiug, that he hoped the good 
would happily exist again, but he knew not. — would not 
at least this wise man, who was groping in the night be- 
fore the dawn, have hailed with joy unspeakable the rising 
of the sun, Him, who " was the true Light, which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world," in whom " life and 
immortality were brought to light," who revealed God, the 
Father, and would not Socrates have run in breathless haste, 
and cast himself like a weary child at the feet of the Lord 
Jesus Christ ! Those in the past who would have believed 
on Christ had they known Him. and those who would be- 
lieve did they know Him, are they not and will they not, 
through Him, come to His blessed presence and society 
above. 



1 



ATHENS. 

In order to win a faint idea of Athens, let us place our- 
selves for a few moments upon the broken pediment of the 
Parthenon, and throw a rapid glance abroad and around 
us. We are seated upon an upcurled isolated crag to- 
ward the southern extremity of a great plain, the plain 
of Athens, and the largest of Attica. 

We are upon the rock of the Acropolis, the central 
point of the interest historic, intellectual, moral, of 
Athens ; upon whose uplifted circumscribed oval stood 
the original cities of Cecrops and Theseus ; which formed 
the nucleus and citadel of all the succeeding cities ; and 
when Athens reached its highest splendor in the days of 
Cimon and Pericles, it became the platform of the most 
ethereal temples of religion which the human mind ever 
conceived. 

Whatever lies at the base of the Acropolis is of less in- 
controvertible interest, yet we are not compelled to grope 
around upon a monotonous plain, as at Nineveh and Baby- 
lon, in order to search for the site of a vanished city, 
but here rests the singular and enduring rock called 
8 



154 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

" Cecropia," called " Aster " the Eye, called " Athense," 
identified by the swelling testimony of ages, and deserving 
the enthusiasm of an ancient Greek, when he says, " The 
situation of the Acropolis and the loveliness of its surround- 
ing atmosphere are admirable ; for while the atmosphere 
of all Attica has this character, that especially which 
hangs over the citadel, is the fairest and most pure, so 
that you might recognize that spot at a distance by the 
crown of light that encircles it." The large plain of 
Athens beneath us runs up narrowing even to the base of 
Mount Parnes on the north, and is shut in by the nearer 
Mount Pentelicus on the north-east, whose chain almost 
locks in with that of Mount Hymettus, and forms the 
eastern wall of the plain, which on the south and south- 
west continues unobstructedly to the blue iEgean and 
the Gulf of Salamis. In so mountain-locked a land as 
Greece, this noble plain seems as if created for the Greek 
mind to breathe more freely, to expand, and to flow forth 
in those Attic works that time has not made old. Barren 
now, the streaks of silvery olive groves over it, lineal de- 
scendants of Pallas' groves, somewhat relieve its brown- 
tinted desolation. 

But let us sweep around us a more limited circle. 
On the north, nearer the suburbs of the city, are the thick 
luxuriant gardens that still mantle the site of the old gar- 
dens of the Academy, in the shallow vale of the Cephis- 
sus, through which ran the commencement of the Sacred 
Way ; over against these gardens to the north-east is the 
conical crag of Mount Lycabettus challenging the Aero- 



ATHENS. 155 

polis ; almost immediately at the base of this rock, stands 
the modern enormous white marble cube of King Otho's 
palace, barbarian though Pentelican, and a little to the 
south of this, on the smooth, clean plain, rise the sixteen 
pure columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus, trembling 
with their tall fruity tops over the dry bed of the 
shrunken Ilissus. In a recent tempest, one of these im- 
perial columns, in spite of its Roman will that had held it 
up slenderly alone through storm and time, was cast 
down. These white pillars have for their background the 
shadowy and not very distant mountain of Hymettus, 
cooling the fevered plain with its dark bulk. Following 
around to the south-west and west, the same imaginary 
line which we have pursued, but bending more closely in to 
the Acropolis, we have the low rocky swells of ground 
among which lie the sites of the Museum, the Pnyx, un- 
doubtedly the Bema of Demosthenes, where he laid bare 
with his pitiless sarcasm the heart of Philip, and sum- 
moned the ancestral shades of Athenian valor to close 
around and sustain his sinking country, the still almost 
perfect little temple of Theseus, and upon the precise area 
of the present city, the site of the whole ancient city, 

" )ftova IlaAAaSos," 

stretching rather to the north and north-east with its 
double walls, temples, altars, agoras, theatres, gardens, 
straight stately streets, triumphal arches, choragic monu- 
ments and innumerable statues, all diademed by the au- 
gust and unwasted dream of Phidias, lifted high above on 



156 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the rock in the transparent, delicate, glowing sky of Greece, 
a vision of perfect and glorious beauty such as blind Milton 
saw in his mind, and the Apostle Paul actually beheld ! 

We have not yet noticed in our eye-sweep one little 
rock or hill just beneath us, close in at the northern base 
of the Acropolis, now rough and bare and hardly weed- 
grown, which must once have stood in the very core of 
these splendors — the rock of the Areopagus. But let us 
first descend from the Arcopolis and walk to the site of 
the ancient agora or market-place of Athens, a short dis- 
tance to the north-east of the hill of the Areopagus. This 
is also the modern market-place and general assembly of 
Athens, and here now, as of old, the stock brokers of in- 
telligence gather, to gratify that spirit of speculation 
which was once the too-finely spun spirit of what was truly 
great, free, and superior in the Athenian character. Here 
sat the philosophers and discussed the last phase of the 
metaphysical kaleidescope of the academy. Here that 
barefooted, rough-clad questioner sat, and plucked the 
feathers from many a vain bird strutting in the broad 
sunshine of his own goodness and wisdom, now calling forth 
hearty shouts of laughter from the common people, and 
now paling the fieriest youth with his hints of things deeper 
than the schools, and his sudden, broadcast seeds of im- 
mortality. Here the Answerer who had seen " face to 
face," and to whom had been " revealed the things which 
were hidden from the foundation of the world," sat, and 
' : disputed in the market-place daily with them that met 
him." Now on his second missionary tour from Antioch, 



ATHENS. 157 

having swept through Asia Minor like a fire, crossed into 
Europe, preached the Gospel in Macedonia, been shaken 
out from prison at Philippi by an earthquake of God, and 
driven by persecution for preaching " the word of God" 
from Thessalonica and from Berea, Paul had come to 
Athens. A higher power had surely led him thither, for 
it would seem as if he himself had come to Athens merely 
to wait for his companions Silas and Timotheus, in order 
to pursue again their journey together. But while there, 
as his lone Christian walks carried him from place to 
place, from marble temple to temple, from flower-garland- 
ed altar to altar, from shady grove to grove gleaming with 
statues of " gods many," and he noticed the processions, 
altar fires, crownings and clothings of the images, and burn- 
ings of incense to statues so matchless in beauty that a 
Christian world now almost worships them, his spirit was 
stirred within him, when he saw the city wholly given to 
idolatry (the fulness of idols). The imprisonments, 
pursuits, escapes of death, which he had just struggled 
through, could not repress that fire in his soul. He must 
preach Jesus Christ also in Athens. 

His first most natural channel was among the Jews. 
From them he passed to the seats of the philosophers, 
teachers and talkers in the painted stoa of the market- 
place, and " daily " as a philosopher solemnly in earnest, 
he proclaimed and discussed a divine and spiritual reli- 
gion, brought and wrought through the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The more contemplative and rational stoics lis- 
tened as to some new foreign religious development j the 



158 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

more superficial epicureans, abhorrent of any thing earnest, 
called him a picker up of religious notions ; but the result 
was that he was invited to withdraw from the republican 
tumult of the agora, in order to explain himself more fully 
in the quiet of the neighboring hill of the Areopagus. 
This very circumstance is sufficient, it seems to me, to 
prove that Paul's words had made some impression even 
upon the brilliant, loose Athenian heart. Something has 
touched the quick nerve of conscience under the fat coils of 
easy pleasure, and the hard folds of irresponsible pantheism. 
Philosophy was now for a moment to sit at the feet of Chris- 
tianity, where at last charmed she shall always sit, a sublime 
handmaid and helper, her face more and more beau- 
tiful, as the beautiful face of one new born through grace. 
Slowly with the interested crowd, Paul ascends the slope 
and the sixteen high steps cut in the rock of Mars' Hill, 
to the small area on its top, where was the stone seat of 
the council of the Areopagus. That three-sided stone 
seat still remains and some of the steps. This was the 
spot, if there was any in Athens, consecrated to serious 
things, to solemn recollections, to trials of life and death, 
and to the grave deliberations of the supreme court of 
Athens. 

Here in former sterner days the judges heard causes 
and pronounced sentence by night, .lest they should be 
partial through their eyes, and the gigantic crimes of 
murder, blasphemy and impiety were arraigned before 
them. But Paul stood there as a preacher of the Grospel. 
We do not call Paul's address on Mars' Hill an oration, 



ATHENS. 159 

as it is sometimes termed, built upon the rules of art, and 
in imitation or rivalry of Grecian eloquence ; but it was 
the wise and sublime preaching of an apostle of Jesus 
Christ, adapting his speech to the place and assembly, and 
introducing his grand theme with an inspired reason and 
the craft of love. It was such preaching as every minis- 
ter of Christ may study to emulate, to feel the pulse of 
his audience with a calm hand, and to present " the truth 
as it is in Jesus " in a manner fitted to gain the keenest 
entrance in its heart. Now. when at length he found his 
position a commanding one. when Athens had fixed her 
bright, questioning eye full upon him, he gives himself to 
a sustained flow of majestic and solemn speech, that these 
rocks and that Pnyx hard by had never heard before, and of 
which the brief outline in the book of Acts conveys a 
living idea. He seizes the magnificent advantages of the 
position to which the philosophers and people had un- 
consciously led him. They gave him the argument and 
he uses it. They led him to the heart of their splendid 
idolatry, and then beneath the very shadow of the Par- 
thenon, with a flash of inspiration, he tells them of the 
eternal " temple not made with hands," and of a God, too 
spiritual, too awful, too holy to be imaged or conceived 
by the human mind. In love and wisdom he freely ac- 
knowledges the original religious impulse that being per- 
verted had led them to this very idolatry, and had peopled 
this white marbled crag above him, and this great city 
beneath him, having more statues than inhabitants, with 
gods of "gold and stone." 



160 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

By this graceful yielding of all that was good in his 
hearers to them, he led them on with him to a true view 
of the divine nature, in the pure reflex light of which their 
own idolatry would appear sinful, deformed, abhorred. 
He takes advantage of their acknowledged ignorance of 
the Divine nature in the midst of their proud intellectual- 
ity, and turning the recorded, indisputable confession of 
ignorance engraved upon one of their own altars gently 
but clearly upon them, he proceeds to tell them of that 
" unknown" Godhead. He could tell them they were as 
sinful and ignorant children before him. In the simple 
contact here of Paul with the disciples of Plato and the 
elder and greater philosophers, in the eye of the world's 
highest illumination and most burnished spiritual culture, 
we see the immeasurable superiority of a mind taught by 
the divine religion of Jesus Christ. In its spiritual point 
of view that mind rose above the minds of the philosophers 
who heard him, as far as his eternal temple above that 
temple of Pallas. The simple contrast here is an unan- 
swerable argument for the revealed character of the Chris- 
tian religion. How was Paul with all his powers, though 
the greatest man of his times, so unsearchably superior to 
the minds that had taught in Athens, and had reasoned 
upon the Divine and human natures now for centu- 
ries 7 

The explanation is only to be found, with reverence, in 
a greater than Paul, who united the human with the di- 
vine mind, and thus poured the light of G-od upon the 
feeble darkness of the grandest human mind. And of 



ATHENS. 161 

Him, now Paul begins to speak, and of that system of 
Faith in Him and peculiar to Him, of whose mysteries 
natural religion, or the simple reason, never caught the 
faintest gleam. The great peculiar doctrines of the Gos- 
pel will be found touched upon in this matchless preach- 
ing of Christ, by the Apostle of k the Gentiles on Mars' 
Hill, as if this were his own most splendid pulpit of the 
Gentiles. But this preaching of Christ, " to the Greeks 
foolishness," was not long to be borne. Partly in scorn, 
and partly in respect, the audience interrupt the preach- 
ing of life and salvation. They descend from low Mars' 
Hill, which had been to them higher than the Acropolis, 
higher than Olympus, in its heavenly momentary light, 
splendor, grace, and favor, some to mock, some to reason, 
and some few to believe. 

One cannot help following in thought the life of that 
undoubtedly cultured Dionysius the Areopagite, after he 
had abandoned all for the cross of Christ. His future 
personality in Athens haunts the imagination. What trials 
of his new love did he not encounter 1 What questioning 
shades of antique wisdom did he not meet at every corner, 
in the city of Plato and Aristotle 1 Did he in old age 
sink sweetly to sleep in Jesus, or did he quickly rush to 
meet the Greek sword, or Roman axe ? What kind of a 
man was he ? Was he daring or shrinking ? Was he a 
Christian Nicias or Themistocles 1 Did he bring any 
other of the wise Athenians into the knowledge of the 
Son of God? Did all the beauty of the old religion of the 
8» 



162 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

sea, woods and mountains, of Homer, Euripides, and Phi- 
dias, never sometimes shake him % Did he keep his robes 
white and undenled from the stains of false philosophies, 
nor ever move away from the simple hope of the Gos- 
pel? 



%ty IWigimt at Islam. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 

There is a sense of the nearness of God on the desert, 
more than on the ocean, which can only be experienced in 
perfect stillness, which is yet the silence of nature. With 
the soundless foot of the camel, one seems to be ever com- 
ing nearer and nearer, step by step, into the presence and 
unto the throne of the Infinite One. At night when the 
moon, wonderfully enlarged in size and light, looms up 
without another object to break its vast shield from be- 
hind the low sand hills, and the far-stretching billows of 
the sandy ocean are glistening as Peruvian silver, to go 
away from the tents, and to be alone, is to come very nigh 
God's awful majesty. The impenetrable bright depths of 
the desert firmament look down on you, the solitary speck 
on the lifeless sand, and He who " covereth himself with 
light as with a garment " must be also regarding his crea- 
ture there. Easily could Moses thus go away from the 
tents of Israel, and be alone with the Grod of Abraham, 
of Isaac, and of Jacob. Nothing then broke upon his 
thoughts of " the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eter- 
nity." The sand-hills sweeping around him in semicircu- 



106 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

lar ridges, or piling up into pyramids, or ploughing down 
into long cavernous valleys where the shadows accumulate 
and blacken, were at best but monotonous objects, and the 
eternal sky above lifted the gaze of the soul to profound 
contemplations of God. The desert is the birthplace of 
religious meditation and enthusiasm, whether false or true. 
The Pentateuch has the desert strongly in it, and it is 
tracked with the forty years wandering in the desert, not 
only in the solemn monotony of its imagery, and the depth 
of its conceptions of God, but in its wilderness fire, and 
in the intensity of its religious enthusiasm. Even let a 
few sentences from the last sublime words of the lawgiver 
of Israel be remembered : 

"And this is the blessiug wherewith Moses the man of God 
blessed the children of Israel before his death." 

And he said : 

The Lord came from Sinai, 

And rose up from Seir unto them; 

He sinned forth from mount Paran, 

And he came with ten thousands of saints ; 

From his right hand went a fiery law for them. 

And of Joseph he said : 

Blessed of the Lord be his land, 

— And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, 
And for the precious things brought forth by the moon, 
And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, 
And of the precious things of the lasting hills. 

And of Zebulon he said : 

Rejoice, Zebulon, in thy going out ; 
And Issachar, in thy tents. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 107 

And of Gad lie said : 

Blessed is he that enlargeth Gad: 
He dwelleth as a lion. 

And of Aslier lie said : 

There is none like nnto the God of Jeshurun, 

Who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, 

And in his excellency on the sky. 

The eternal God is thy refuge, 

And underneath are the everlasting arms. 

Thus also in the character of Abraham and of Job, is 
exhibited a faith not in essence, but in feature, rather of 
an oriental, or more strictly Arabian than universal type, 
which, nourished in awe, quietude, and contemplation, is 
usually passive, but when it acts, acts with terrible ener- 
gy. More than once it has been observed that oriental 
religious thought, nursed in the still burning desert and 
unguided by divine inspiration, has issued forth in the 
most fierce and destroying fanaticism. The bosom of the 
silent desert was the birthplace of tremendous Islamism. 1 

The young camel-driver of the desert, Mohammed, of 
a priestly stock and claiming descent from Abraham him- 
self, was without doubt of a highly religiously emotive, or 
at least imaginative temperament. 2 We do not suppose, 

1 Islamism is an older name than Mohammedanism. "Islam" 
signifies primarily entire devotion to another's will, especially that 
of God, and thereby the attainment of peace. Its relation to the 
Hebrew word "salem " is evident. It stands in a secondary sense 
for all the tenets, doctrinal and practical, of the Mohammedan reli- 
gion. From it are derived the terms " moslem " and " mussulman." 

2 The Koreish tribe from which Mohammed sprung, had a mix- 
ture of a Jewish blood direct, it is said, from Ishmael. 



168 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

at the present day, that original, strong disgust at the 
idolatry of his nation and desire to introduce a better 
faith, is denied to Mohammed. His countrymen were 
partly of the elder Arabian or Sabaean, and partly of the 
Magian idolatries, with, however, dim recollections still 
haunting them of an ancient Abrahamic patriarchal faith, 
pervading, indeed, all the false religions of the East, even 
those of India and China, thereby proving a streaming 
forth of primitive mind East and West, from about the 
region of Mesopotamia, or perhaps a point still further to 
the East, and nearer the heart of Asia. 1 To restore this 
ancient Arabian Abrahamic faith in one God, was always 
Mohammed's profession. He seems early to have been 
drawn to such contemplations, as in his camel-drivings 
over the desert, and visits as a factor to Syrian and Egyp- 
tian towns, he eagerly sought out the traditions of older 
times, and sacred localities, and informed himself at least 
of the outside views and practices of Judaism and Chris- 
tianity, receiving, there is good reason to believe, much 
attention and many hints from Christians, and especially 
from a monk named Sergius, whom he met in Syria, 
and who afterwards resided in Mecca. 2 Indeed, Arabia 

1 Abraham stood with divining arrows in his hand as a stone 
idol in the ante-Mohammedan Caaba of Mecca. Bib. Sac. Vol. IX. 
No. 34. p. 257. 

2 Carlyle says : " I know not what to make of that ' Sergius^ 
the Nestorian monk ; ' probably enough of it is greatly exaggerated, 
this of the Nestorian monk." There is no need of making much of 
"Sergius;" thi9 was already the seventh century of the Christian 
roligion. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 1G9 

at that time contained as resident citizens, large num- 
bers of Christians, chiefly schismatics, as well as multi- 
tudes of Jews. The Nestorian instructors of Mohammed, 
particularly opposed to Greek and Latin superstitions and 
virtual idolatry, strengthened his bias to a simple Abra- 
hamic belief in one spiritual God. 

The mind of Mohammed revolved this thought until 
he was forty years old, when he proclaimed it as an inspi- 
ration from heaven. We should not be entirely unwilling 
to suppose that Mohammed, up to this time, was laboring 
under a mental enthusiasm, arising from the conception 
of so great an idea, which amounted perhaps to a belief in 
a species of inspiration. But the bold impiety which thus 
early, as a ground-creed, ever linked with the sublime and 
pure truth of "one God," the corollary that " Mohammed 
was the prophet of God," militates against this view. And 
when opportunity came to Mohammed, developing according 
to an oriental proverb, the love of power which is latent like 
a closed flower-bud in every man's breast, the zeal of a 
spiritual reformer gave way. He hesitated not to grasp 
the sword when fortuitously extended to him. And this 
is somewhat a key to his character, which was an impul- 
sive one, following rather than compelling circumstances ; 
now strongly guided to higher objects, and now, when the 
temptation came, seizing it for selfish ends. When tempt- 
ed to sensuality, his luxuriousness was a hard struggle 
with his sanctity, and it required all his prophetic casuis- 
try to cover the breaches made in his sacred character. 
So his Bedouin predatory disposition, impossible to be 



170 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

resisted, called for hot-sped sanctions from heaven, bring- 
ing in the timely god to help him out of his dilemmas. 

We regard Mohammed, about whom there have been 
so many opinions, as a man of extraordinary genius, de- 
cidedly the most so of his rather mediocre age ; a genius, 
humanly speaking, equal to the vast effects which have 
sprung from its energic character. He who leads out his 
nation from gross idolatry to the knowledge of one spirit- 
ual God, deserves the praise of it ; and here he was great, 
showing lofty intelligence, and a sublime religious appre- 
ciation. Had he not proved false to that God whom he 
taught to idolaters ; nor made a great truth which his 
penetration had fastened upon, the instrument of unhallow- 
ed ends ; had he not deliberately assumed the awful 
crown of a prophet with its involved consequences ; had 
he not shown that he possessed no true conception of the 
moral and spiritual character of God, all his conduct, life 
and name would have been perfumed with the odor of 
goodness and greatness. His nature from the hand of 
God was probably generous and large, and his mind acute, 
imaginative and suggestive ; his gentleness, love of chil- 
dren, eloquence, and personal dignity, are dwelt upon with 
ecstasy by his Arabian biographers ; light, they say, 
beamed from his forehead, fragrance wafted from his body, 
his form cast no shadow, and a grateful cloud overhung 
his desert steps. 1 Politically, he manifested sagacity and 
force, laboring for national union, and stamping, with the 
powerful tread of his sandal, the thousand discordant 

1 Merrick's sheeah traditions of the Hyat-Ul- uloob. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 171 

tribes of Arabia into one. But the dark sides of his na- 
ture are equally strong, and his own book, the Koran, is a 
standing witness against him, and would be in itself fatal 
to his sacred pretensions. One of the chapters is expressly 
to reveal the indulgence of heaven to its favorite prophet, 
for an act of incest, according to Arabian law. That 
there were great and elemental strifes in his soul between 
good and bad, we doubt not ; for with extreme cunning 
he was still a fanatic, or perhaps better, an enthusiast ; a 
lustful, blood-stained man, a genuine Arab, he was never- 
theless one of lofty native power, and of the precise type 
of oriental greatness ; an unscrupulous zealot, he was yet 
no imbecile, and must have possessed some splendid traits 
of character to have excited the love and veneration with 
which he has been regarded by millions for twelve centu- 
ries. 1 To one visiting the East, the vast influence of 
Mohammed, throwing its colossal shadow upon eternity, 
cannot but be felt ; and a desire will be inevitably excited 
in any philosophic or religious mind, to inquire into the 
sources of this power ; and while doing this, there is no 
fear of disturbing truth, unless, indeed, truth be wantonly 
disregarded. 2 

1 Ryan. 

2 The modern French writers, in speaking of Mohammedanism, 
seem to lay aside Christian discrimination and conscience. Indeed, 
to read a sentence like the following, we lose every boundary of 
truth, and embark on a sea of all irreverence and unbelief: "La 
mission de Mahomet, revelation feconde qui illumine la Mecque au 
contact de Jerusalem et du Sina\" — M. Barrault. 

Carlyle's conception of Mohammed, as far as we may judge, 
appears to have done in the main, some rough justice to his personal 



1*72 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Doubtless the chief reason of the rapid primitive suc- 
cess of Mohammed's faith, was the sword, sanctioned by 
all the authority of heaven — the sword carving rapidly 
an empire which arched from India to Spain, which sway- 
ed the mind, and almost the destinies of three Continents, 
and which an eminent German writer has even laid down 
as one of the three world-strides in the advance of know- 
ledge. But no moral cause of the success of Islamism 
purely as a religion, was perhaps more operative, than the 
opportunity of a corrupt Christianity, About the end of 
the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, a. d.. the 
gate of Zion was fairly flung open for the wild boar of the 
forest, or the lion of the desert, to enter. The great split 
of the Eastern and Western churches had occurred (the 
house was already divided against itself), and at the West 
the form of the Man of Sin had begun to take fearful dis- 
tinctness in the temple of God. In the East, especially 
in Syria, Arabia and Persia, the old Manichaean flame still 
glowed, the tremendous Arian controversy was not yet 
stilled ; the Nestorians offered a determined front to the 

character, and to have thrown a truer glance into the genuine Arab, 
than writers generally have done. But Carlyle has, in his down- 
handed strokes, wounded truth severely in continuing to call a 
mingling of human sagacity, religious emotiveness, truth, falsehood, 
cunning and passion, by the sacred name of prophet, a prophet 
being alone one who is inspired by the. Holy Ghost. " For the 
prophecy came not in old time by the will of man : but holy men 
of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 

It would seem sufficient to Mr. Carlyle, for one to have a brave 
insight into the "great Deep of Nature," or, in a word, to be a man 
of pre-eminent, swaying genius, to be a prophet. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 173 

main church ; the Monsophytes, or since called Jacobites, 
were in bitter schismatic opposition, and still continue so ; 
in Syria and Mesopotamia, even Tritheism nourished, and 
according to Origen, in Egypt and Arabia the joining of 
the Virgin to the Godhead had adherents. Ever since the 
Council at Nice, there had been continual religious con- 
tention, reaching its acme at this period ; imperial and poli- 
tical disputes were fused with ecclesiastical; "Christianity 
was taken from the spirit and made sense ; there was no 
progressive inward union to the kingdom of God by faith, 
but outward mediation by signs and forms." * At the 
same time learning breathed but feebly in the cell and 
cloister, the Latin tongue had ceased from Italy, and 
philosophy was banished from the world, Aristotle being 
alone retained as a kind of dialectic master in controver- 
sy. Mohammed, at this crisis, ostensibly proclaimed a 
faith incapable of heresies, 2 indivisible into sects, the 
simple faith of Noah, and Abraham, and primitive man, 
though in fact a pure Deism, which, even if philosophically 
true, is not. as a modern author has pregnantly remarked, 
and never was, true religion. Christian schismatics, espe- 
cially the Nestorians, actively oppressed by the Greek and 
Catholic churches, were willing to advance far in union, 
even with an enemy, against a common foe ;' and the sim- 
plicity of Mohammed's faith without doubt contrasted fa- 
vorably with the miserable and incredible superstitions of 

1 Neander. Hist, of the Christian Religion, Vol. III. " Spinoza. 

3 The opening chapters of Evagrius's Ecclesiastical History 
give a most vivid impression of the deadly bitterness of religious 
strife in this age. 



1 74 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the Christian church, and this also had its influence But 
we have met with no reason to believe, as many have sup- 
posed, that Mohammed himself, whatever his followers 
did afterwards, knew aught truly of the doctrine of the 
Trinity, or had a further view than the assailing of Pagan 
polytheisms, and the sagacious turning to his own account 
of the debased, superstitious, tumultuary aspect with 
which Christianity presented itself at that time, especially 
in the eyes of the Eastern world ; yet we have no diffi- 
culty in believing, with a species of Islamic predestination 
itself, that Mohammed was raised up at this time espe- 
cially, and for the reasons of the peculiar and wounding 
controversies of the age, to be a rod to the corrupt and 
abandoned church of G-od. 

No cause, however, of the permanence of Islamism, 
and its wide and thorough conquest of the oriental world, 
even to the present moment, do we regard so important as 
the fact of its singular affiliation to the oriental character. 
This will require a rapid glance at one of the prominent 
characteristics of the East, which will in itself explain 
much more. Though it is universally known and believed 
that philosophy, religion, in fine all things intellectual and 
spiritual, have had their birth in the East, yet they have 
not had their final developments there ; though the germs 
of all things were, and are still, in the East, yet they have 
not there come to their maturity. The philosopher Cou- 
sin has hinted at this, in the idea, that in the very oriental 
mind, there seems to be a singular infancy of human na- 
ture ; and in childhood there is unity, or little feeling of 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 175 

the need of spiritual progress, development and culture ; 
the elements of things are satisfying, there being a pre- 
dominance of nature over culture, of imagination over 
reason, and of sense over science. The orientals have 
been, and are still, as children, undisciplined, fanciful, 
seeking sensual contentment rather than hard and heav- 
enly virtue, loving the marvellous even more than the 
true, delighting in story more than argument ; if not too 
far effeminated by luxury, rejoicing also in war as do chil- 
dren ; with minds suggestive of all things divine and true, 
without the will to follow the suggestion ; with extreme re- 
ligious susceptibilities, but in spiritual things rising to the 
highest possible elevation, in mere visual speculation, or 
contemplative tranquillity, rather than in profound, vigor- 
ous, philosophical, or more than that, practical and life- 
regenerative faith. To such a nature Islamism was of- 
fered, and it was received like native food and kindred 
air. Its one simple religious element was enough to satis- 
fy the spiritual susceptibility and feed the religious feeling, 
thought and meditation, while it seemed to touch every 
other point of oriental character, and also of its peculiar 
depravity. It flattered the untamed pride and temper of 
exclusiveness, confirmed the love of war and conquest, 
strengthened the immemorial negative morality of the 
East, and gave latitude to its luxurious spirit. A union 
of devotion and indulgence, religious profession and easy 
life, profound form and inner tranquillity, precisely suited 
the oriental mind ; the cup was mixed so rarely with 
heaven and earth, that they could not refuse it. We see 



1 76 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

sometimes this style of mind and character in Christian 
lands, where the sublimities of spiritual speculation are 
joined with earthly tempers and lusts, where devotion and 
life seem to be strangely divorced, and a religious profes- 
sion or philosophy exists, without having in it a spark of 
soul-life, or spiritual salvation. Nothing but the power of 
God, we must believe, exerted through his Word, by his 
Spirit, will ever remove the oriental mind from the em- 
brace of such a faith. 

We could not be just in giving the chief causes of the 
success and permanence of Islamism, without dwelling 
upon one other, simply the mixture of true with false. 
And this leads us to speak of Islamism more particularly 
as a religion, under which its true as well as false features, 
will briefly be noticed. Strictly as a faith, it may be re- 
garded historically, doctrinally and practically. Its source 
and moulding shape, whatever influences may have flowed 
in upon it afterwards, was unquestionably Mohammed 
himself. His own spirit, life, acts and sayings, and espe- 
cially the book which he left, the Koran, form the head- 
spring of this mighty fanaticism. In these the prime dog- 
ma, the essential faith, was given : " There is one God, and 
Mohammed is his prophet." Mohammed's own personal 
existence furnishes the tangible, visible nucleus of reli- 
gious affection, and the perpetual living religious model. 
Of the Koran, it can be said in a word, that it might have 
been written in the design of God, to show the abysmal 
chasm between a genuine and a spurious inspiration. It 
has been called " a counterfeit of the Pentateuch and a 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 177 

plagiary of the Gospels," though much of its author is 
still discernible in its subtlety of thought, sagacious ob- 
scurity, and sometimes poetry. Written in the ancient 
Cufic, it settled the Arabic language as entirely, as did 
Luther's Bible the German language. Beyond the Chris- 
tian idea of Scriptural inspiration or reverence, a supersti- 
tious regard or worship is attached to the letter of the Ko- 
ran, as the embodiment of Divinity, or God really existing 
in the word. From the Koran, a theology and polity 
have been gradually drawn by commentary and practical 
application, which form Islamism as it now stands, and in 
many respects such as its founder never dreamed of. The 
polemic opposition which Islamism met from Christian 
writers of the Greek and Latin churches, would in itself 
compose a curious ecclesiastical history. The Greeks 
were especially severe, and as their swords failed, their 
pens grew sharp. A body of Greek apologies, hurled 
against Islam before 1200 a. d., bore the title of 
" BaortAeia," or the name of the emperor Joannis Cantacu- 
zeni. In a later age, among other writers, the reformers 
Savanarola and Luther were conspicuous ; the last in his 
rough German-Latin dealing most sturdy blows, although 
one shrewdly suspects he is ever chastising the Pope over 
Mohammed's back. 1 Augustine, and generally speaking, 



1 Hard names abound in these Greek and Latin treatises. Thus 
a running commentary upon the Koran proceeds for many pages, 
almost simply thus : 

"Idiota!— 
Homo diabolicus ! — 



178 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the Roman church, in these assaults, treated Islamism as 
a Christian heresy, classing it particularly with the Noe- 
tian and Sabellian heresies. At the Council of Vienna, 
the Koran was forbidden to be read or opened by Latin 
Christians. It may be sufficient to remark here histori- 
cally, that Islamism of the present day has lost its fanati- 
cism, and therefore its chief religious energy ; rather ex- 
isting as a social and political principle, and grounding 
itself really more in oriental nature than belief. Doc- 
trinally considered, it has but one essential dogma, the 
unity of God ; to this, however, the false is immediately 
joined, of the prophetic nature of Mohammed. Thus this 
conjunction of the false with the true runs through the 
whole system, engrafting upon a few of the truths of Chris- 
tianity the death and corruption of superstition, like 
a living body tied to a corpse. If Mohammedans believe 
in a judgment, it is Mohammed who is to be judge of 
quick and dead ; and the terms of judgment are changed 

Primogenitus Satanae ! — 
Stulta, vana, et impia ! " — etc. 

One of Luther's characteristic sentences speaks of the especial doc- 
trines of the Gospel as " robustissima arma. Haec sunt tonitrua, 
quae destruunt non modo Mahometum, etiam portas inferi. Maho- 
metus enim negat Christum esse filium Dei. Negat ipsum mortuum 
pro nostris peccatis. Negat ipsum resurrexisse ad vitam nostram. 
Negat fide in ilium remitti peccatos et nos justificari. Negat ipsum 
judicem venturum super vivos et mortuos, licet resurrectionem 
mortuorum et diem judicii credat. Negat spiritum sanctum. Ne- 
gat ejus dona." It has been said that the contentions of Christian 
and Mohammedan -writers on the doctrines of freewill and predes- 
tination led the way to Pelagianism and to the Pelagian contro- 
versy. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 179 

from the solemn standard of God's Word and Spirit, to 
children's play-terms. If heaven and hell are truths of 
belief, they are so wholly unsphered that " the powers of 
the world to come " have little more of spiritual energy 
than the apprehension of an earthly gaol, or the prospect 
of a kiosk amid the rushing streams and apricot-gardens 
of Damascus. As to the sensual character of the Moham- 
medan paradise, which some are disposed to deny, the 
truth as far as we may judge, is, that Mohammed himself 
intended the material view, that his immediate followers 
sincerely received it thus, and that while spiritualizing 
commentators have here and there sprung up and still 
form a class, the great body of Moslems, or the orthodox, 
have ever held and still most firmly hold the literal inter- 
pretation of the Koran, confirming this by their 
lives, for as the heaven of a faith is, so will the earthly 
lives of its believers be. If, likewise, there is even a. deep 
belief in the decrees of God, it is so generally deficient 
even in the Hebrew element of Divine complacency with 
good and separation from evil, that God is made the author 
and tempter of evil, and thus, of course, the moral sense 
receives a stunning blow as if from the hand of God him- 
self. Not only is Islamic predestination a dark necessi- 
ty, discovering nought of the intelligence of God and of 
adaptation to a Divine and infinite design, but it effectu- 
ally prostrates the pillar of man's freedom, which even the 
inexorable Greek " ei/xap/xeV^ " was saved from by the in- 
stinctive pride of human dignity, and it discerns no gleam 
of a Christian faith in the harmonious determinations of 



180 NOTES OF A THEOLOGIOAL STUDENT. 

God with the moral nature of man ; so that while G-od 
reigns supreme, his moral creatures are as free as if he 
did not reign at all, thus throwing them on the unspeak- 
able gift and glory of self activity. 1 Even in the Moslem's 
belief in God, it is, without the Gospel manifestation of 
God, almost entirely a distant and awful abstraction, hav- 
ing its only human power in this principle of predestina- 
tion, or Asiatic resignation. There is no coming down of 
God to man in love, and no rising upward of man to God 
in faith. The infinite need of an incarnate, redeeming 
God, touching, meeting, regenerating sinful humanity by 
his descended Word and Spirit shed abroad, leaves the 
system a cold Deism, a philosophical creed, but not a reli- 
gion. There is, therefore, no spiritual and Divine life in 
the Mohammedan, although he believes in a God, and in 
future accountability. 2 This is strikingly shown in the 
practical workings of the system. 

1 Moslem fatalism opposed to human consciousness, will yet be- 
come indirectly a moral lever to help upheave this system. Even 
quarantine was a great progress. 

2 The Pythagorean, Gnostic and speculative elements of oriental 
mind and history, have entered also into Mohammedan theology, 
and we have in its bulky interpretations, glosses, systems and cat- 
echisms, the results of meditation upon many of the deeps of meta- 
physical and religious thought, as the being of God, freewill, elec- 
tion, virtue, faith, etc., and it becomes interesting to follow the hu- 
man mind even in such contrasted circumstances on these incessant 
problems of nature. The following are two or three extracts, taken 
here and there, from the " Catechism of Omer Nessefy." 

'•' Art. 2. The attributes of God do not constitute his essence ; 
the word is in God's eternal essence. 

"Art. 19. Faith consists in the admission and profession of all 
which has been announced from God. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 181 

As a system of good works and purely formal, even 
the Catholic faith in its strictest days has hardly surpassed 
it in scrupulosity ; hut then it lodges in the stiff branches 

"Art. 20. The acts of believers are susceptible of more or less ; 
belief ought to be absolute. 

" Art. 21. Belief does not differ from resignation. 

" Art. 22. Believers and unbelievers are able to lose and recov- 
er faith ; but the faith of the elect is not shaken by this, because 
the future is unchangeable in the Divine essence." — L'empire Otto- 
man, Chauvin Baillard. 

Faith in God ; from the Mohammedan Catechism : 

"Faith in God consists in knowing truly -with the heart and 
confessing openly with the mouth, that the most high God exists ; 
that He is true, permanent and very essence; that He is eternal in 
relation to the past, having never begun, and eternal also in rela- 
tion to the future, since He is without the necessity of an end ; that 
there appertaineth to Him neither place, time, figure, nor any out- 
ward form whatever — no motion, change, transposition, separation, 
division, fraction or fatigue ; that He is without equal and without 
parallel ; that He is perfectly pure, one, everlasting, and liv- 
ing ; that He is omniscient, omnipotent and sovereign ; that He 
hears, sees, speaks, acts, creates, sustains; that He produces in- 
telligently ; that He causes to live, and causes to die ; that He gives 
beginning to all, and makes all to return to their original state, 
whenever he pleases ; that he judges, decrees, directs, commands, 
prohibits; that He conducts in the right way and leads into error; 
and that to Him belong retribution, reward, punishment, favor and 
victory. It is necessary further to believe, that all these eternal 
attributes aie embraced in his essential Being, and subsist in Him 
from everlasting to everlasting, without division or variation, yet so 
that it can neither be said that these attributes are Himself, nor that 
they are essentially different from Himself, since each of them is 
conjoined with another, as, for example, life with knowledge, and 
knowledge with power. Such are the great and inestimable perfec- 
tions of the most high God, under which He is known and adored 
by the faithful. Whoever dares to deny them or to call them into 
question, whether in whole or in part, truly he is an infidel. O 
God ! preserve Thou us from infidelity ! " — Southgate's Travels in 
Persia, etc. 



182 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

of prescriptive formula and objective duty, without influ- 
ence to produce that inwrought holiness, or even pure 
morality, which faith in Christ necessitates from its very 
nature. The four great prescriptive duties of Islamism 
are prayer, fasting, alms, and pilgrimage to Mecca ; and 
by these rounds of works the Mohammedan climbs to his 
paradise. The Mohammedan prayer is something more 
than picturesque ; it is impressive to behold the Moham- 
medan at his devotions, his simple, manly, unabashed 
prostration before God, in the field or the town, whenever 
the Muezzin calls from his minaret, or whenever the sun 
comes forth, touches the meridian, and sinks beneath the 
horizon, without regard to place, occupation or company. 
But what are his prayers % Are they a spiritual commu- 
nion with God ? are they confessions of sin ? are they the 
breathings of penitence 1 are they the pleadings for par- 
don ? are they purifyings of the heart, or even expressions 
of holy, devotional desire ? This can hardly be claimed. 
The brief Mohammedan creed, repeated and repeated, 
with a few variations in general ascriptions of praise, con- 
stitute the prayer itself, while physical prostrations and 
attitudes make up the rest. It is, in fact, chiefly a bodily 
exercise, and allies itself, with certainly a high degree of 
outward dignity and propriety, to all physical methods of 
worship, of which we see an instance among ourselves, in 
the Shaker communities. The Mohammedan rises from 
his prayer to the life of sense which he led before ; 1 and 

1 In riding from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, I was accompanied 
by a noble looking, middle-aged Arab sheikh, who was a renowned 



THE RELIUION OF ISLAM. 183 

the same remark will apply to tlie religious fast of the Ra- 
mazan. The Mohammedan generally observes this fast 
with rigor, even the solitary Bedouin on the desert, ac- 
cording to the exact Burckhardt, confining himself to half 
a pound of black bread in the twenty-four hours ; but the 
manner in which all, from the sultan on the throne to the 
poorest - fellah" at the water-wheel, rush back again to 
their old vices, at the moment the cannon booms to an- 
nounce the close of the fast, shows how little of a spiritual 
or chastening character it has, and how purely it is a mat- 
ter of Stoic endurance. So the matter of alms, is chiefly 
a form, regulated by a species of poll-tax ; and the pilgri- 
mage to Mecca, if it ever had a religious character, has 
long since become a sad business of mingled money-mak- 
ing, vagabondism and immorality ; a " hadji," or pilgrim, 
being almost synonymous with a worthless fellow. No 
longer does the magnificence of mighty caravans issuing 
from the arched gateways of Bagdad and Damascus, lend 

"santon" or saint. Five times in the course of the ride, whenever 
we came to sweet running water, the chief dismounted, washed his 
face, hands and f jet, spread the carpet, which formed his saddle- 
cloth, upon the'ground, stuck his long lance upright at one of its 
corners, and turning his face towards Mecca, went through his de- 
votions, touching his forehead in the dust in token of humiliation ; 
yet at the close of the day, the same man attempted to practise upon 
me a fraud. But this need not give a whole impression of Moslem 
piety, for in that species of devotion which springs from the emo- 
tions and sentiments merely, as we have said, the orientals are emi- 
nent, and we believe that under the teachings of a true religion they 
would not only have the feeling, the sentiment, the ecstasy of 
devotion, but the calm faith, intelligent principle and reasonable 
hope. 



184 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

solemnity and pomp to these pilgrimages, and cover up 
their inutility, puerile superstition and vices. 

The civil morality of Islamism, drawn from the reli- 
gious, has no higher character. The law of revenge, or the 
talio, is directly enforced from the Koran. Slavery has 
also in the Koran express sanction, and by Mohammedan 
theocratic statute, absolute power is given to the master, 
and all civil or judicial protection removed from the slave. 
Polygamy, connected with pliant divorce and slave concu- 
binage, opens the door to sensuality, only limited by the 
wealth and power of the individual. It is true, that earth 
and heaven, according to Islamism, are made for man, and 
woman has at best an uncertain, and always a degraded 
place, in either. The names of the crimes themselves, 
under the Mohammedan civil law, exhibit the mournful 
condition of the public morals, and in the administration 
of justice the grossest bribery universally prevails. At 
the present day even some of the old prescriptive Moham- 
medan virtues are vanishing, and intemperance itself is 
rushing upon the oriental world, the traveller's boat up 
the river Nile being lighted by night with the fires of dis- 
tilleries The attempted reforms of the father of the pre- 
sent sultan, have only precipitated the grave Ottoman into 
the more shameless profligacy of the French school of vice, 
and by the testimony of intelligent travellers, throughout 
Persia and the more interior Mohammedan countries, the 
most profound and awful sensuality reigns. Yet strange 
to say, the Mohammedan makes his boast of the morality 
of his religion, and shameful as the truth is, in many re- 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 185 

spects, in general integrity, solidity and dignity of charac- 
ter, he rises superior to the nominal Christian with whom 
he daily comes in contact. He has recently shown a no- 
ble example of the ancient Moslem virtue of hospitality 
in his treatment of the Hungarian exiles, against whose 
ancestors his own once so fiercely contended, the candele- 
bras which now light the mosque of St. Sophia having 
been plundered from Hungarian temples. And the Mo- 
hammedan is exceedingly affected by the example of a 
high morality wherever it appears, giving a hope of a 
speedier triumph of pure Christianity among the Moham- 
medans whenever it shall begin to move upon them. Let 
us, in conclusion, say a few words as to the present condi- 
tion of Islamism, especially in its relations to Chris- 
tianity. 

We have not pretended in the foregoing rapid sketch 
of Islamism and the causes of its success and permanence, 
to impart any new truth, but would only desire to draw 
more thought to this great field which is sooner or later to 
be possessed by Christ, comprising an eighth portion of 
the souls of the world. We have not concealed a certain 
respect for this religion, which, so mingled with false as to 
be wholly falsified, is yet so superior to the thousand fetisch 
superstitions that shine not with one ray of spiritual or 
even philosophic light. It is, in truth, rather a Christian, 
or at least Judaic heresy, than a simple heathenism, being 
at the time of its rise, a rude and fierce reaffirmation of 
the truth respecting God, when idolatry was fast destroy- 
ing the purity of true religion. Of course the great ob- 
9* 



186 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

stacle to the progress of Christianity among the Moham- 
medans is the law respecting apostasy. This is the mighty 
crime of the Mohammedan, and if not retracted after the 
third time, is punishable with death ; and the homicide of 
the apostate is counted no crime. But this law will evi- 
dently not long resist the progress of Providence, for al- 
ready Islamism, in a hundred instances, has receded from 
its own standards, and permitted unheard of innovations. 
It has "become a tolerant system, every religion through- 
out the sultan's dominion being now protected by law, 
whereas the successor of the prophet is bound to wage ex- 
terminating war against all unbelief, and to offer the 
sword's edge or the creed " Namaz" to every man, and all 
the world. The sword itself of the Moslem is broken, and 
the faith, therefore, has lost its great propagandist, and it 
consequently no longer grows. The religious zeal of 
Islam has also become cooled, its own piety has grown 
dull, rationalistic disputes have arisen, and absolute skep- 
ticism has crept extensively over the Mohammedan mind. 1 
When thought is aroused, the inconsistencies and falsities 
of their faith appear glaring, and it is alone the profound 
principle of predestination, or stirless obedience to the 
system of things or laws under which they find themselves, 
which prevents oriental minds from outbreaking into open 
denial or higher truth. Islamism being itself essentially 

"V * Even the first child of Islamism, the Bedouin of the desert, 
is heard to say jestingly, according to Niebuhr : " the religion of 
Mohammed could not be made for us. We have no water for ablu- 
tion on the desert ; we have no money for alms ; we already fast the 
year round; and God is every where, therefore why go to Mecca? " 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 18*7 

a politico-religious system, the polity being drawn from 
the faith, the civil and religious power are of course indis- 
solubly united ; they stand or fall together ; for without 
the Mohammedan state there is no Mohammedan church, 
the visible " Iman" or representative of the Prophet being 
the sultan himself, who, like the Pope, constitutes not 
only the head, but the very principle of the religion. 
The present hollow vastness, therefore, of the Islamic 
empire, portends the hollow weakness of Islamism, 
the religion having no distinctive, separate principle of 
life. All it has of good belongs to Christianity, and all 
its evil is inwoven with its secular decaying policy. God 
seems always to have wrought with a peculiarity of provi- 
dence in the East; He has wrought at long intervals, and 
then suddenly. Continual progress, as at the West, does 
not seem to be the law of oriental existence. The inhabit- 
ants of the East are a wonderfully fixed quantity; the 
customs and opinions which sway the enlightened world 
do not seem to reach them ; the revolutions which like 
magnetic storms sweep over Europe, reverberate faintly, 
and die away on their unsympathetic shores ; there the 
people stand, like their own mysterious temples of the 
past, hardly touched by cycles, themselves the most im- 
pressive antiquities ; the Samaritans were Samaritans 
until they were extinct ; the Jews are still Jews ; the 
Ishmaelites are still Ishmaelites : a Mohammedan once, 
an Eastern proverb is, a Mohammedan for ever. When- 
ever a change occurs in the East, it seems to be by the 
fiat of Omnipotence. The Exodus of the Hebrews, the 



188 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

rise of Christianity, the springing up of Islamism, all were 
sudden and miraculous movements, in which the hand of 
G-od was awfully visible. It seems as if a more direct 
Divine interposition, more regardless of means, wrought 
in the East ; and now that Mohammedanism has answered 
its predestined end, may not God, by one of those sudden 
and omnipotent decrees, cause the Mohammedan religion 
to go down and disappear, as quickly and startlingly as it 
rose ? This may sound visionary, but looking at the pe- 
culiar nature of the system, its linked destiny with the 
secular power, its abstract, indistinctive, unvital character 
as a faith, and its past relation in the providence of God, 
we cannot believe that, unassailable as it now appears, it 
is to be vanquished by Christianity by slow steps, rood 
after rood, region after region, but that it is destined to 
fall rapidly under the unseen hand of God. Yet any 
theory like this, should not blind the eyes, or deter the 
effort, in present missionary responsibility toward the Mo- 
hammedan. The missionary world should not neglect in 
its action, and certainly in its prayers, him, who has al- 
ready so much of common ground with the Christian. If 
direct action cannot yet be made for his spiritual welfare, 
much can be done indirectly, as a preparation for the time 
when the civil obstacles shall cease before the pressing 
force of political necessity ; for religious freedom to the 
Moslem, is the next step which naturally follows the reli- 
gious freedom to Christians and other religionists, already 
secured by the firm intervention of England in Turkey, 
and lately in Persia. 

Seven centuries ago there existed between Christianity 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 189 

and Islamism an antagonism of temporal power, in which 
perhaps the preponderance of authority, and certainly the 
higher tone of outer refinement and elevation, belonged 
to the latter cause ; now, the visible opposition has nearly 
passed away, and the moral antagonism remains. But 
this, though it may be as strong as ever, presents a far 
more favorable position of things in a religious view; for 
while absolute interdiction still closes the mind of the 
Mohammedan, he has nevertheless the opportunity of re- 
flection, and therefore for a long time past he has mani- 
fested evident signs of intellectual curiosity, of looks di- 
rected toward a higher civilization, and even of moral and 
religious antipathies being softened by closer and quicker 
contact with Christian faith and intelligence. There are 
indications, also, of Christian attention being directed to- 
ward the Moslem world. The rapidly and ruthlessly en- 
croaching vastness of adjacent European powers, the dan- 
gerous condition of the Mohammedan empire, held togeth- 
er chiefly by the pressure of outside forces, its compelled 
and unwilling admixture with European questions, its 
awkward attempts to meet the progress of the age in civil 
and social reform, the frequency of travel in Mohammedan 
lands, and the unavoidable encounter of Christian mis- 
sionaries with Moslem mind, have in these latter days 
brought the Mohammedan prominently before us. His 
claims, we think, upon our religious sympathies, are 
great. 1 

1 Even an occasional discourse, such as our missionary, Rev. Mr. 
Hamblin, not long since preached in Constantinople, on the Orien- 



190 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

All religious writers on the East agree, that the power 
of a pure Christian example will be a great means of turn- 
ing the eyes of the Mohammedan to Christ, and this ex- 
ample will be furnished, it is hoped, in the fast-increasing 
body of missionaries and their converts in the East. 
Already the Turks have begun to discriminate between 
the oriental Christian and the Protestant ; and their ad- 
miration for the higher purity, elevation, truth and spiritu- 
ality of the latter, has often exhibited itself unmistakably. 
But we look to a still mightier agent in the silent leavening 
and preparation of the Mohammedan mind and heart for 
a thorough and moral transformation — the power of the 
Word of God. Mohammedans acknowledge the Divine 
inspiration of the Christian and Jewish Scriptures, and 
of late, especially in the city of Constantinople, they have 
begun to read the Gospel, with more than a feeling of cu- 
riosity. There is a call for a Turkish translation, especial- 
ly of the New Testament, and the discovery is beginning 
to dawn upon many a darkened Moslem mind, that all the 
good which their own faith boasts, is here found in its 
pure head-springs ; and when the word of Christ finds 
entrance, his faith follows. Often the heart is reached 
through the door of the mind, and the oriental possesses a 
mind of original powers, as history has now and then 
shown, which, even under the pressure of centuries of fa- 
talistic inaction, has yet preserved a manly living instinct 

tal Churches and Mohammedanism, shows that the encountering re- 
lation of the latter with Christianity, and their pressure on the 
missionary responsibility, are beginning to be felt. 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 191 

for the good and true. A vein of conviction sometimes 
struggles upward to the light through the mountains of 
Islamic ignorance and sensualism, from the central gold 
of Divine thought in the human mind — an aspiration 
which seeks for something more of God, than the bare 
knowledge of his existence and power. God manifest in 
the flesh, the love of God in Christ to man, has, it is said, 
started even the apathetic Turk into strange emotion and 
reflection. This alone, the Gospel salvation, can arouse 
the Mohammedan from the profound sleep, the terrible 
entombment of spiritual life, in which he is buried. This 
alone can infuse animation through those lethargic king- 
doms, those hundred millions of souls stretched in 

% " the sleepy drench 

Of that forgetful lake" 

of strong delusion. The Gospel of Christ can alone even 
bring the infancy of the East to the full manhood of con- 
science, reason and action. The temporal as well as the 
eternal salvation of the fast sinking East, can only come 
through true Christianity awakening the sense of moral 
responsibility and freewill, and thereby invigorating the 
oriental mind. That mind, through whose medium the 
Bible came to men, feeling again the impulse of Divine 
inspiration pouring through it the tide of life and hope, 
may throw off its bands, and in the first home of the hu- 
man race, the garden of the world, the birth-place of our 
heavenly religion, the freest and largest developments of 
that religion may yet be seen. The latent devotion of the 



192 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Eastern nature, awoke to its perfect and grandest energy 
by the Spirit of God, may produce, as far as they may be 
reproduced in uninspired men, Peters and Johns and 
Pauls, not as types, but as classes. Woman in the East, 
giving the contradiction to the cruel faith of Islam wher- 
ever she has heard the name of Christ and His spiritual 
life, faith and kingdom, shall hail with joy the coming of 
a pure religion, appealing to a quick conscience, and a 
noble self-activity. The free Christian home and altar 
shall then be erected on the ruins of polygamy and slavery. 
All classes, united by the common faith and love of Christ, 
and regulated by Christian equal laws, shall take the 
place of the personal despotism of individuals and the 
sunken degradation of the masses, which is the immemorial 
type of Eastern and Mohammedan society. Above all, 
the cold, gloomy, vast void between God and man, inducing 
a still and frozen religion, shall be filled by the Divine 
love of Christ's religion, the atoning Love of the Son of 
G-od, awakening to love, faith, holiness, hope, human fel- 
lowship, mental and spiritual activity, freedom, develop- 
ment, progress and life. The East shall feel the touch of 
Christ and shall arise, and not before. Should we not give 
to it the Word of Life, even where we may not yet send 
the preacher ? * 

1 The above was composed and published before the agitations 
which now rock the East had begun. Even in the light of these 
last events I hold the same instinctive opinions concerning the faith 
whose destiny has assumed so singular and wide-spread political 
importance. I truly believe that the Mohammedan empire must 
quickly have and accept the Gospel, in order to be preserved either 



THE RELIGION OF ISLAM. 193 

spiritually or politically, — that this is its only salvation, — and also 
that its immobile faith will be more suddenly than gradually brought 
to an end, but perhaps in a manner not anticipated by any reflective 
man two years since, or by Russia herself, and yet in a way not 
overthrowing the theory which has been feebly shadowed forth. 
"With thousands in this land I have been deeply aroused by the re- 
verberation of that war of colossal aggression, claiming actual power 
in a foreign empire through childish titulars, and which appears to 
hide profound designs of hostility to freedom itself, beneath the 
mask of the Christian religion. Christianity came into this world 
to renew instead of to annihilate, to save and not to destroy. Chris- 
tianity says, better a nation saved, than a nation destroyed on ac- 
count of its false faith. The Moslem's soul is dear to God. And 
the day has passed when religion can justify the motive of human 
or national destruction. The language concerning Christ is, "He 
shall not strive nor cry. A bruised reed shall he not break, and 
smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto 
victory, and in his name shall the Gentiles trust." The triumph of 
Christianity through the nations shall be won by moral not material 
power. The suffering innocence and celestial love of Christ shall 
conquer this world, his mild heart stealiug into it and subduing it 
unto himself. Shall the ages of persecution be re-acted upon this 
earth ? It seemed as if the distorted moral glare of the Crusades 
was melting into the gentle meridian light of a true Christianity. 
The idolater is now recognized as having just rights, and the crimi- 
nal has not lost, beyond the statute of God and the welfare of society, 
his human claims. 

It were indeed wonderful if God chose the way of annihilating 
Mohammedanism, by saving the Mohammedan people through gen- 
erous Christian instrumentality. This would be returniug upon 
that wounding and desolating system, the deep revenge of Christ, 
which is love. The fifth article of the treaty of Alliance between 
Turkey and the Christian Powers, which renders to all the religious 
subjects of the Sublime Porte, equal civil rights, strikes atone of the 
main roots of Islamism, and must inflict an incurable blow upon a 
system whose religious life intertwines with its civil, and both have 
their energy in the intense sentiment of the divinely elected and in- 
finite superiority of the Moslem, whether as nation or individual. 

It is a subject of devout gratitude to God that the Christian 



194 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

Missions in the Mohammedan empire are now preserved in the un- 
expected and only manner in which they could have heen preserved 
in a war with Russia, that sooner or later was inevitable. God's 
ways are a great deep. Through this seething chaos beginning to 
work in the East, and destined to upheave Asia, and to roll back 
perhaps its billows over Europe, the Spirit of God is moving, and 
shaping all to some perfect end. 



§etI]Ujmu, 



BETHLEHEM. 

Out from Gaza, the sea-gate of the Holy Land coining 
from Egypt, I rode to Askelon, dashing over its prostrate 
pillars, to seek an escape from a thunderstorm sweeping 
down from Mount Lebanon, that hissed through the black 
ruined walls and towers of the old Philistine city, as if 
shrieking the eternal prophecy against Askelon, " Aske- 
lon shall not be inhabited ! " — And from a sheltered nook 
under the great cliff which overhangs the Mediterranean, 
I watched the excited waves, as they ran up to the very 
foot of the cliff, higher and higher, their roar growing 
louder and louder, impetuously climbing up nearly to the 
wall of the precipice, and returning back moaningly, roll- 
ing over and crushing the delicate white shells and stones, 
moving and grinding the sea-sand, and with the increasing 
fury of the tempest ploughing the long beach as if by a 
mighty harrow, sweeping up to view the mud, weeds, and 
trophies of the deep sea, and then dragging them back 
again into its dark bosom, and I thought of the words of 
Isaiah, uttered from observation of the same sea, not far 
from where I was then standing, of the " troubled sea " of 



198 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the wicked heart " when it cannot rest," whose " waters 
cast up mire and dirt." — its fierce striving after, falling back 
and never attaining, its impotent, aimless tossing, writhing, 
flinging upwards, murmuring, and foaming, its rushing 
after happiness and breaking on the stern rocks, its heav- 
ing up its own treasures to deposit them in a place of 
rest, and having them dragged back again into the depths 
of perpetual despair, by a downward resistless power. 
From Gaza I rode through the flowery vale of Sharon, by 
the tall tower and silent white necropolis of Ramlah, 
among the deep windings of the stern and gloomy hills of 
Judea, until through an overpowering impulse, be it called 
superstition or not, I found myself on my knees, with start- 
ing tears, at the sight of Jerusalem. 

It was not from the East, nor Jerusalem, that we first 
approached Bethlehem, but from that extinguished Phle- 
gethon of the Mar Saba, the lower volcanic gorge of the 
Kidron, where the Coenobism of the early centuries of 
the church, amid horrid grotesque rocks and awful shadows, 
found its sepulchral skeleton religious idea tremendously 
realized. The first part of our journey from the Greek Con- 
vent, was threading slowly the defiles of knife-edged vol- 
canic rocks without a tree or shrub, and now and then 
from some higher point catching a glimpse of the Dead 
Sea far below us shining dull like a bedewed mirror, in 
the sun's rays, and a cloud of thin and half illuminated 
mist going up continually from its bosom. We at length 
reached a somewhat opener country, where the hills grew 
faintly greener, and the valleys broader. 



BETHLEHEM. 199 

On one of these high table-land plains, we met an old 
Bedouin Arab and his family, who had come up here to 
pasture his camels in the dry season. The aged man stood 
at his tent door. He was such a picture of Abraham, as 
Michael Angelo would have rapidly painted in ample 
fresco, somewhat ruder and simpler it is true than the 
powerful and rich patriarch, but of a grand outline, his sun- 
darkened face like a bronze of Arezzo. surmounted by a 
lofty caftan set high back from his swelling forehead, his 
features regular and noble, his eye clear, soft, and large, his 
snow white beard sweeping on his breast. He stood erect, 
clad in flowing and somewhat brightly colored burnous, with 
one hand resting easily upon his silken girdle, and the 
other grasping a long staff. He saluted us with dignity, 
with his sons, slaves, and herds about him. Yet though 
perchance one of Abraham's own children in the flesh, he 
was alien in the spirit, and belonged to the lopped branch 
of Ishmael, and to the frenzied disciples of the False 
Prophet. But even thus in objects of moral opposition, 
images of sacred things are easily suggested under such 
circumstances ; for in a land like this, one travels with 
the religious eyes of a child, and not with the hard eyes 
of a philosopher. One feels indeed as if he were himself 
a child moving on in some religious c Mystery,' or ' Divine 
Comedy,' or as if a more awful and early world was sur- 
rounding and shutting him in, and every rock grows mys- 
terious, and every being wears an aureole around his head. 
All things are viewed with a more heart-touched and mo- 
ther-taught piety. 



200 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

After some hours, across a deep and wide valley, far 
off, on the very climax of the rising hill region towards 
the north, Jerusalem appeared before us, and at this dis- 
tance, with its soaring site, long battlemented walls, massy 
flanking towers, and tall tapering minarets elancing from 
heavy domes, it appeared to possess all its attributes of 
pristine and even of ideal splendor, to be a city, as the 
painter exclaimed, "built for eternity ! " 

Another town was soon before us on the west, the lit- 
tle one of Bethlehem, and we were then at one angle of a 
comparatively diminutive triangle, whose other angles 
were Bethlehem and Jerusalem. This compressed nature 
of the scenery of the Holy Land, strikes a traveller in 
Palestine with his first astonishment. With the involun- 
tary association of the infinite facts connected with these 
scenes, with the shadows of heavenly things suspended 
over them, they notwithstanding lie all as in the bowl of 
the hand, and from some high Quarantania or regal Her- 
mon, almost the whole of that "glorious land" ' may be 
seen, over which God " bowed the heavens and came down." 

As we approached Bethlehem over an undulating and 
broken country, I looked curiously at every valley which 
ran up among the hills, where perhaps at rare intervals a 
few sheep were feeding, for here, sitting on this bold over- 
hanging entrance rock, the singer of .Israel might have 
touched his early harp to music, springing even then from 
a deeper inspiration than the inward stir of genius, and 
its source, to himself a sacred awe. Exposed to the ele- 

1 Daniel 11: 16. 



BETHLEHEM. 201 

nients, the luminous vault of the Syrian sky bended above 
him, with its flaming sun and its wonderful stars, the wild 
high hills around him, and the quiet flocks at his feet, the 
young psalmist might here perhaps have struck the first 
rude chords of that glorious psalm of natural praise : 

" Praise ye the Lord. 
Praise ye the Lord from the heavens : 
Praise him in the heights. 
Praise ye him, all his angels: 
Praise ye him, all his hosts. 
Praise ye him, sun and moon : 
Praise him, all ye stars of light. 
Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, 
And ye waters that be above the heavens. 

Praise the Lord from the earth, 

Ye dragons, and all deeps; 

Fire, and hail ; snow, and vapors ; 

Stormy wind fulfilling his word: 

Mountains, and all hills ; 

Fruitful trees, and all cedars: 

Beasts, and all cattle ; 

Creeping things, and flying fowl ; 

Kings of the earth, and all people ; 

Princes, and all judges of the earth : 

Both young men, and maidens ; 

Old men, and children: 

Let them praise the name of the Lord : 

For his name alone is excellent ; 

His glory is above the earth and heaven." 

The Judacan scenery here, without having any thing in 
it large or sublime, had nevertheless, looking off from its 
breezy summits and going down into its deep vales, much 
that was inspiring, for even in a naked and desolate hill 
country, there is always something to fix the eye in the 
10 



202 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

ever new combinations of hill forms, and there is an elastic 
lifting and swelling of the spirit, as if, one has finely said, 
the land itself were lifting and flowing around. The 
mountains of Judaea, unlike the majestic ranges of nor- 
thern Syria, have no grandeur, and are also naked and 
unsoftened, showing generally but the yellow volcanic 
limestone, as if it were still a cursed land, over which the 
old prophecies yet hung in their power, dryness and gloom. 
But among these close, furrowed hills, the primitive He- 
brew, fighting with hard nature, as well as the brass- 
sheathed Philistines, and entirely cut off by mountain, de- 
sert and sea from other nations, nursed just those quali- 
ties of perseverance, solitariness, firmness, even obstinacy 
of character, which made him. like his own Mount Zion, 
to stand the faithful conservator of precious truth, among 
so many loose, dark, billowy, and swiftly vanishing 
idolatrous Asiatic peoples and ages, until the divine ful- 
ness of time. Now the busy genius of the Hebrew no 
longer moves like a spirit over these hills, guarding the 
small soil from the sheeted rains, and carefully training 
the few springs to wind among the ashy valleys. There is 
no dotting of cattle upon a thousand hills, no shouting of 
the vine-dressers when in glad fury the red wine press is 
trodden. The stalwart reapers of Boaz are low, the bar- 
ley and the wheat harvests are thin, and "the laborers are 
few." All around Jerusalem, and all Judaea, forming a 
great contrast with the lovely pastoral plains of Samaria 
and Galilee, it is a very solemn land, sunny and solemn, 
and silent like a sunshiny graveyard. 

Judaea now is like her own Rachel, sitting in the dust, 



BETHLEHEM. 203 

with a coarse Bedouin blanket over her head for a sack- 
cloth, " weeping for her children because they are not." 

As one approaches the immediate neighborhood of 
Bethlehem the thin vegetation brightens and deepens, and 
in the number of dark-leaved fig trees, silver olives, palms, 
glossy vineyards, and gardens fenced with the curling 
speckled monster cactus, David's town yet preserves its 
ancient fame, of the fruitful. At length Bethlehem itself 
was directly before us, a wedge-shaped mass of square, 
white, glistening stone houses, rising step-like one above 
another, the lower line being terminated by the massive 
walls and towers of the Greek convent, and the whole 
compact diminutive town standing upon the rising crest 
of a hill, or spur of a mountain, on either side of which 
ran gorge-like valleys east and west. The mountain slopes 
and ravines on either side of the town were considerably 
wooded and green, the plough had been lately at work, 
and the dews of heaven seemed to fall more kindly, and 
the sun to bend less menacingly upon this blessed spot. 

The long deep vale which runs north of the hill of 
Bethlehem, when I glanced up its narrow bay winding 
into the higher regions of the Carmelite ridge, was filled 
with the motley-colored and sweet-scented blossoms of the 
bean harvest ; and in this vale, tradition says, the shep- 
herds were watching their flocks by night, when the " tid- 
ings of great joy," — the " good news " from God. dropt 
upon their bewildered senses, and that sublime solecism 
in heaven took place, and the great silent gates of eternity 
swung open, and the seraphim doxology of <zlory to God 
in the reconciliation of the world through Christ, sounded 



204 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

out, and was borne through the lower heaven, making 
its stars to burn brighter, and our lone planet, darkly 
wheeling through space, to thrill with a strange delight. 
Yea, this may be the very valley ; for where truth does 
not suffer, we crave the spell of old tradition, and love to 
listen to the waves of holy feeling that for ages have mur- 
mured and broke around a sacred spot, leaving still their 
deep sound on the ear of the soul. 

As we crossed this vale of the shepherds to enter the 
town, we came rather suddenly upon a little brown-skinned 
dark-eyed boy, shouting after his goats, making the rocks 
ring — perhaps " the youngest : ' of some patriarchal Jesse 
in the town above, "of a ruddy and beautiful countenance." 

Our train at length climbed up the steep ascent, and 
passed under the arched stone gateway, and we were in 
Bethlehem, yes, the never-lost little Bethlehem of Micah 
and Luke ; where, the changes of time excepted, upon this 
rocky hill, amid these olive groves, under this Syrian sun, 
the Saviour of mankind was born. 

Even in the scene of his world entrance, the Son of 
God showed that poverty, through which he has made us 
rich. Not in some spot which centered the wealth, mind, 
and power of earth, not in a towered city on the fat plain 
of Nile or Euphrates, not in philosophical Athens, nor in 
imperial Rome, nor in the sacred magnificent Jerusalem, 
was he born, but in a little rock-girt shepherd town, " lit- 
tle among the thousands of Judah." Next to his having 
entered the world in absolute solitude upon the desert, or 
waste place, which would have been inconsonant with his 
human mission and life, the lowly hill-locked shepherd 



BETHLEHEM. 205 

village of his nativity, linked him the most humbly and 
quietly with the race whose nature he assumed. He came 
into the world like the mild morning light, wholly unob- 
served at first, and very faint for a time, but growing 
stronger and stronger until its serene splendor filled earth 
and heaven. He came into the world as his converting 
truth into the soul, perhaps hardly perceived at the be- 
ginning, but gradually inundating its deepest capacities, 
and overtopping its sublimest desires. Yet little Bethle- 
hem, beside its prophetic title to the birth spot of the 
Messiah, had in itself a certain moral meetness for this 
event. Its own history had been pathetically marked in 
the piety, suffering, and true grandeur of humanity. The 
patriarch who was powerful with Grod had laid down here 
in grief his first and best beloved. Here Ruth, firm rock 
beneath sweet blossoms, herself a meek daughter in the 
line of Jesus, had planted all upon a pious love, and while 
picking up the scanty gleanings of self-elected poverty in 
mild content, was permitted to gather the sudden, burst- 
ing, golden fruits of overrunning harvests. Here above 
all, the shepherd psalmist, chief ancestor, and crowned 
prophet of Christ, was born, who conqueringly founded 
the visible type of that spiritual victorious kingdom of 
Faith, which the Sou of David established on an eternal 
basis ; and if naught else in all time had been produced 
in Bethlehem, but the first, lowest, most trembling tones 
of the Psalms, those voices of the vital elements of piety, 
those songs of the human heart in its real cries, conflicts, 
and faith, it would have been the fittest spot in all the 
world for the spiritual shepherd of Israel, and saviour of 



206 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the lost sheep, first to have seen the light of earth. And 
Bethlehem is near Jerusalem, even as the birth was nigh 
the death, bringing close together the Alpha and the 
Omega of that life, on which all lives hang. 

The view from the flat stone roof of the Greek convent 
out into the soft, purpling, deepening Syrian evening, 
takes in the shadowy olive groves and wooded slopes im- 
mediately about the town, the violet colored hills between 
Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, the singular square mount 
of Bethaccerrom, and the dimly seen and straightly ruled 
outline of the higher mountains of Moab, beyond the sea 
and river, upon whose ordained heights rested the weary 
feet of the great leader of the exodus. While left entirely 
alone by the taciturn yet courtly brethren of the convent 
on the broad high battlement of the convent, to look 
forth over this dim landscape, standing on the very cen- 
tral mount from which the fountain of divine Christianity 
with all its unrevealed healings had streamed down over 
the whole world, the solemnity of the scene insensibly 
deepened. The eternal world seemed to slowly descend 
and couch upon these dusky forms of hills, over which 
the suffering feet of Him who brought Life and Immor- 
tality had moved. Again might the chorus of the angels 
of God have swept softly through the night air, nor have 
hardly stirred within me a miraculous surprise, for where 
Christ was born, do not the angels of God still hover ? 
And the angels who began the song of Peace that shall 
swell on through infinitude, were they the down-rushing 
thrones of heaven, 

" The helmed Cherubim, 
And sworded Seraphim," 



BETHLEHEM. 207 

the wheeling, flaming legions of the will of God, or a choir 
of children spirits whose angels always behold the face of 
the Father, drawn down from thence to the earth-born 
child, whose only strength is their perfect love, their close- 
ness to the heart of God ? Did not an innocence like that 
of infant Jesus, sing the Advent of Love, though all pow- 
ers, spirits, intelligences, essences, unfallen and redeemed, 
shall join in the eternal diapason of triumphing Love? 
But lo ! in the clear profound of heaven, the bright even- 
ing star trembles over Bethlehem ! and behold ! the troop- 
ing of dim forms up yonder steep slope ; they are the 
shepherds who il come with haste to see where the young 
child lay ;" and see now again the shadowy caravan of the 
wise men of the East pass more slowly up the hill, and 
gazing above, for their majestic heavenly guide over de- 
sert, mountain, and vale, has stopped, and rains down 
light upon the lowliest roof in the humble village of Beth- 
lehem ! Full of awe, and of pale anticipation, they dis- 
mount from their camels. They approach the lowly stable 
with mighty emotion. Their tall forms darken the mean 
entrance. An old man is before them leaning on his staff, 
contemplating in silence a mother and her child. Nearer 
and still nearer they irresistibly approach the child, and 
smitten with the sharp recognition of a nature wrapped in 
cloud, "fell down and worshipped him." 

And may we not likewise approach that serene scene 
in the stable of Bethlehem, for it is but a feeble in- 
fant peacefully slumbering there. It is the lamb of God 
still hovered over by the angels, watched by mortal affec- 
tion, guarded by heavenly love, and not yet bound, on the 



208 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

dread altar of sacrifice. Even if we be great sinners let 
us not be afraid, for it is only a new-born babe, helpless as 
human infancy is, lying in a manger. 

Yea the babe is human, though divine. Not from 
heights of earth to depths of earth, but from heights of 
heaven to depths of earth, was the humiliation of Jesus 
Christ. And the servant form, the poverty, the suffering, 
touched the very lowest point of humanity, in order to lift 
up the most wretched to the glory of God. The humilia- 
tion of the son of God was no half stooping of divine love 
to man, but reached down to the humblest, and wretchedest. 
The poorest slave may come to the babe of Bethlehem, who 
was born to poverty and to the cross. The manger is only 
less affecting than the cross : it is no less stupendous. 

It was the very needful commencement of the Atone- 
ment. Bethlehem must come before Calvary, so that upon 
these two, the gate of salvation swings open to the human 
race. Without the glorious key of the Incarnation, the 
life and death of Jesus Christ are closed, incomprehensi- 
ble, unvital, unregenerative to us, nor may the profound- 
est mind unlock them. 

But the divine key of the Incarnation instantly un- 
locks them, and floods them with " marvellous light," — 
light that is glorious but mild, celestial light, light beam- 
ing from the loving face and smile of our God. 

" He took not on him the nature of angels, but the 
seed of Abraham." 

" The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." 

" Great is the mystery of godliness. God was mani- 
fest in the fleshP 



\m% 



10» 



NAZARETH. 

On account of the heavy latter rains which before our very 
eyes made a great plain into a great lake, we were obliged 
to climb over a weary mountain, and traverse the craggy 
track of a wild swollen mountain brook, that seemed al- 
most to give a startled cry in its song as we strange peo- 
ple wandered up its ravine, in order to reach the regular 
path to Nazareth. We issued forth upon the path at an 
ancient well, not far from the town. Here were congre- 
gated many Syrian women from the village, who had come 
down to draw water, some sitting by the well, some stand- 
ing with the large red earthen water jar upon the head. 
The grace of all oriental things, from the palm tree to the 
prince, is also shared by the women, whose attitudes, even 
in their toil, are ever reposeful and easy. The fine air 
and sky were reflected in their gentle dark eyes and their 
subdued mirthfulness. 

The meek mother of Jesus often came to this well, and 
slowly trode the pleasant descending path home with the 
brimming pitcher upon her head, and leading, it may be, 
her little son. Passing down a low mountain side, and 



212 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

crossing through an olive grove, with a sloping cultivated 
field on one side, we suddenly turned the point of the hill, 
and the vale and village of Nazareth were before us. In 
the new-sown field upon our right hand, a flock of crows 
had alighted and were greedily devouring the tender seed 
just beginning to sprout. The same scene and spot gave 
to our Lord doubtless the illustration of the sower, — the 
field he passed with his mother, morn and eve. We wound 
around the hill and crossing over a portion of the minia- 
ture plain, entered the small Nazareth, crowded together, 
as it seemed, at the very furthest extremity of the vale, 
and culminating almost on the top of the high hill that 
closed up the narrow end of the valley. Just before the 
village, some Bedouin Arabs had pitched their long, black 
tents, and the tethered impatient war-horse and the up- 
right spear, were the first sights that greeted our eyes in 
the peaceful home of Jesus. 

Within the heavy walls of the Franciscan convent we 
were kindly received by the monks, who conducted us al- 
most immediately to the church built over the reputed 
hearth-stone of Joseph and Mary, but the new-sown field 
and the crows,'or nature testifying, altogether destroyed the 
church with its golden hanging cressets, and nineteenth cen- 
tury altar. After the simple meal, I immediately ascended 
the mountain at the back of the town, and was rewarded 
with an afternoon landscape, glorified by the declining 
sun, setting amid scenes of eternal solemnity, and not 
tinging one little hill-top, that had not been already touch- 
ed by the finger of God. Towards the far west shone the 



NAZARETH. 213 

Mediterranean. To the south-west ran the great black 
wall-like ridge of Carmel, sweeping up from Judea and 
leaping boldly and suddenly into the sea, where on the 
high precipitous edge, the ancient prophets looked abroad 
over the sublime ocean, and down upon the proud cities of 
the coast. On the hither side of Carmel, stretched the no- 
ble plain of Esdraelon, not extending quite to the sea where 
Carmel terminates, but broken up by a transverse chain 
of low hills, running diagonally across its northern side, 
and separated from Carmel by a narrow pass to the sea. 
This plain echoes along the ages of the Bible with the deep 
roll of chariots, and was the plain of decision, the place of 
camp and battle, from the time when Zebulon and Naph- 
tali rushed to ". the high places of the field," and " the 
stars in their courses fought against Sisera." Following 
the line of mountains around, which encompass this plain, 
upon the south and south-east rise the compact mass of 
Gilboa, where Saul and his strength went down, and near- 
ly to the east swells the almost symmetrical round moun- 
tain of Tabor, which before I left the scene, grew dark, 
condensed, and black, like a great semispheric altar, as if 
hewn by art. On this mount, tradition has chosen to as- 
sign the scenes of the transfiguration, that real opening of 
the glorified nature and Divine being of Christ, for the 
confirmation of Faith, and for the renewed majestic testi- 
mony and voice of heaven ; and once Jesus on earth shone 
with celestial ascension splendor, and once sufficed. 

Beyond Tabor in the south-east lies the desert moun- 
tainous region beyond the Jordan. Toward the north- 



214 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

east is the city of Cana of Galilee, and directly north-east 
is the high peak of Saphet that " city set on a hill." Im- 
mediately at my feet on the eastward hand, nestled the 
quiet vale of Nazareth, a small plain of table-land, run- 
ning north-east and south-west, shut in entirely by low 
mountains, and having no emptying into the lower plain. 
Here our Lord lived till ripe manhood, till he was ready 
to do his Father's work. The wonderfully secluded vale 
of Nazareth in connection with this glorious scenery amid 
which it is itself entirely hidden away, make it well fitted 
for the great event for which it was selected. " A man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief," growing up in humili- 
ty '• like a tender plant and a root out of a dry ground," 
Jesus was not to dwell and to come to intellectual and 
spiritual maturity, except in such a still, even obscure 
spot, a little chapel of nature among the hills, where even 
sinful man is more devout and nearer to Grod than in the 
plain and city, and nature assists in the development of 
the powers of the soul. Is it wanting in reverence, or in 
the true and perfect appreciation of his nature, to say of 
Jesus of Nazareth, that in his youth 

" His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills ? " 

Did not Christ often climb this very hill where I sat, and 
look upon this wide panorama, this map of the Divine word, 
and sometimes did not his face turn thoughtfully toward 
the south and toward the Holy City, and toward the place 
where it should be said, " it is finished." 



NAZARETH. 215 

In Nazareth where I remained some days, partly to 
recover a poor follower of my company who had been set 
upon by thieves in the neighborhood of Djenin, and stript 
by them and left half dead, without our knowledge at the 
time, the occurrence having happened as we were hurrying 
on in the night. During this time, I witnessed an orien- 
tal marriage, and was invited to the feast, and tried with 
others to freely rejoice as a friend of the bridegroom. 
The day before leaving, I took a walk alone down the 
whole length of the vale, unto where it looks off by a 
mighty and sheer precipice of some five hundred feet upon 
the lower plain of Esdraelon. I met no human being, nor 
signs of man. Fresh, yea wild nature was here. All na- 
tural things were as they must have been in the eye of 
Him who was " called a Nazarene." On the peak of a 
high cliff to my right, as I sat looking off the precipice, an 
eagle was seated, stirring his wings at times and hoarsely 
screaming. The flowers around bloomed and withered, 
as once they bloomed and withered. No sacred scene is 
so free from the touch of change, so fresh, so undisturbed, 
or so balmy to the religious imagination as Nazareth. 
I convinced myself that the mount of precipitation, as it 
is traditionally termed, was the very precipice upon whose 
edge I was standing, for I saw no other precipice like it 
in and around the village, and doubtless the ancient town 
was situated further down the valley, very near this, its 
eastern termination. I thought particularly of the won- 
derful fact that the Nazarenes did not " honor " or even 
recognize him, who had his chief abode among them, and 



216 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

that where he lived thirty years there he was despised, re- 
jected, and even pursued for destruction. I thought 
especially on that scene when our Lord, having returned 
to Galilee from his first marvellous and power-accompany- 
ing visit to Jerusalem (his fame and his miracles travelling 
back with him to his own obscure home among the moun- 
tains), "came to Nazareth where he had been brought 
up : and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on 
the sabbath day, and stood up for to read." Doubtless all 
the town was gathered together in that synagogue, to hear 
him, about whom men had begun to speak far and wide, and 
who had purified the temple of Jerusalem by one majestic 
act, and who had arrested the strong and certain arm of 
death, and who had spoken words of power and of light, 
unknown to the prophets. There they were all gathered 
together, those with whom he had for his life long lived, 
an dwalked, and talked, and toiled. Kinsmen, neighbors — 
the assembly is large, the synagogue is full, there is great 
curiosity and wonder now to hear Jesus, and what should 
be his theme, and his address ! " And there was deliver- 
ed unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when 
he had opened the book, he found the place where it was 
written, — " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 
hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; he 
hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
ance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to 
set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the accept- 
able year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he 
gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the 



NAZARETH. 21 7 

eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened 
on him." Is it improbable that our Lord asked for the 
roll of Isaiah which was delivered to him, and why did he 
ask? It is not irreverent to suppose, because above all 
other prophets. Isaiah was the prophet of Christ, the chris- 
tian prophet, whose words almost anticipate the gospel 
history, and tremble with the pathetic foreshadowing of 
the whole life of the Redeemer. The beautiful passage 
to which he turned, was also the very limning of the Holy 
Spirit, of his own divine character, and spiritual work of 
Redemption. The moment when all those eyes were fas- 
tened on him, was one of intensity, for what was he now 
about to say ? Something was anticipated of extraordinary 
import. " And he began to say unto them. This day is this 
scripture fulfilled in your ears. 11 The application was 
made. He stood before them as He of whom Isaiah spoke. 
What a lifting up to heavenly exaltation and eternal 
life was that moment to the kinsmen and neighbors and 
fellow-townsmen of Christ. They might seize the glorious 
inheritance, and enter in for ever. But they were not 
worthy of the Gospel proclaimed unto them by Christ 
himself. " And they said, Is not this Joseph's son 1 " 
Even while they wondered at the grace and power of his 
words, they consumed the precious moment and emotion in 
their perverse curiosity and human unbelief, while Christ 
continued his speech, knowing their hearts, and telling 
them that as the widow of Sarepta, and Naaman the leper, 
were chosen by God, and others rejected, what was the in- 
ference ? — that they who would not recognize him, although 



218 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

he had dwelt among them thirty years, and whom even 
now they would not know and believe upon to everlasting 
life, but saw him only as "Josephs son" that they also 
were thus far rejected. They perceived this, and their 
real heart was instantly developed beneath the touch of 
divine penetration. " And all they in the synagogue when 
they heard these things were filled with wrath, and rose up, 
and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow 
of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might 
cast him down headlong." — Yea to the awful verge where 
I was standing, they led him — they dragged him — the in- 
furiated neighbors, and kinsfolk of Jesus, the old men who 
had sat with Joseph and Mary and broken bread under 
their roof, the younger men who had walked with Jesus by 
the way since boyhood, they who had known him even from 
a child, and had found no blame in him, among whom he 
had lived sinless as the new-fallen snow on Hermon — yea 
they come, the maddened crowd, like the stormy sea toss- 
ing up its hoarse waves, — " but he, passing through the 
midst of them, went his way." 



Capenuntm, 



CAPERNAUM. 

If ever there will be flashed upon one's mind in Palestine 
the momentary gleaming image of the " Promised Land," 
it will be perhaps while wandering around the green bor- 
ders of the sea of Galilee. There, out from its wild, 
craggy desolation, the " Lord's land," * revives and 
smiles. There the rich loamy earth sinks under the 
horses' hoofs. There rich though small patches of the 
blossoming harvests scent the air. There the clouds of 
birds wheel over and dip in the bright wave, and from it 
the fishes leap sparkling in the sunbeam. Even wher- 
ever there is perfect loneliness, there is still the compan- 
ionship of living nature, the darkly green, sedgy grass, 
the low thick terebinth groves, the crimson-berried 
bushes, the aromatic blooming oleander, the wild fig, the 
little star-shaped blue flowers sprinkled every where, the 
verdurous sides of the mountains which slope steeply 
down to the water, reflected with every tint in its calm 
crystal, and the great snowy Hermon, white and dazzling 

1 Hoa 9: 3. 



222 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

in the fierce sun rising over all, as when King David 
struck his golden harp to it. The lake of G-ennesareth 
is the Syrian lake Leman, and Hermon is the Syrian 
Mont Blanc, only the Alpine lake and mountain have 
had but human harps untouched by Divine fire to hymn 
their sweetness and majesty, but God made them all beau- 
tiful, and upon them all does his smile lie, and not solely 
in the mountain of Samaria, and in Jerusalem the Holy 
Temple, and in Capernaum where Christ dwelt, shall men 
worship the Father, but the whole world is the " Holy 
Land." When once the cities of Greek and Roman archi- 
tecture, with their towers, and white-pillared Corinthian 
temples, stood icithin sight of each other around the mar- 
gin of this miniature sea of Gennesareth, only twelve miles 
long and six broad, and it was the very central circle and 
seat of the life, joy, and wealth of Palestine, it must have 
been an unequalled scene of elegant, social, and animated 
beauty, — even when our Lord who so loved its cheerful, re- 
poseful shores, and walked upon its conscious wave, and 
calmed its fiery madness by a word, and chose his disciples 
from those who cast nets in it, went out not far from " his 
own city " Capernaum to preach, and was so pressed by 
the easily assembling crowds, thronging from so many popu- 
lous neighboring cities and points, coming in boats and 
running around the shore, that he entered Simon Peter's 
small fisher boat, and pushed a little from the land, mak- 
ing his pulpit on the softly rocking wave, and preached to 
the multitudes, as if from the sea of Eternity, to the 
shores of Time ! Capernaum and its vicinity formed the 



CAPERNAUM. 223 

scene of what might be called the more quiet though public 
preaching and teaching period of our Lord's life, very brief ■ 
though it was, and apparently only preparative for the great 
events at its close, — the period when more truly it might 
be said that he " dwelt among us." Upon some overlook- 
ing hill slope, probably on the northern bank of the Lake, 
he preached the beatific Sermon on the Mount. In the 
synagogue of Capernaum he delivered the heavenly dis- 
course recorded in the sixth chapter of John. Near by 
Capernaum at the calling of Peter and Andrew, of 
James and John, he preached from the boat, and after- 
wards taught the Apostles their mission by one of those 
significant acts, which never to the end of time is to be for- 
gotten ; when Simon Peter having toiled the night long 
and caught nothing, then at the command of Christ, and 
because of his presence, drew up the struggling, bursting 
nets, and falling astonished at the feet of the Divine mas- 
ter, received with the other disciples, the great commis- 
sion, that they should thus typically become the takers 
of immortal souls, and " fishers of men." Can we wonder 
that " when they had brought their ships to land, they 
forsook all and followed him ? " And at even time " when 
the sun was setting," and throwing its warm quivering 
tints over the glassy mirror of the sea, and veining with 
bright light the tops of the opposite eastern mountains, 
whose bases had already begun to darken, the last rays of the 
sun played upon the white, anxious, pain-drawn counte- 
nances of the sick, the sightless eyeballs of the blind, the 
convulsed features of those possessed with devils, the 



224 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

diseased and burdened, whether rich or poor, high or 
low, brought out from the great city of Capernaum, and 
all the faces of that faint sick multitude were upturned 
toward One, mild and majestic, who stood at the humble 
door of Peter's fisherman's house, and with unwearying 
patience stretched forth that hand of love and power, and 
laid it upon " every one of them, and healed them." The 
devils bowed before him, and saluted the Son of God, as 
they departed to their own places. What a scene in the 
history of our human nature ! Who would rend it from 
the page of man, by unbelief! How flowed the sympa- 
thies of the all-compassionate One towards those stricken 
beings, those children of sickness, sin and death, whose 
dying nature he had himself taken in order to touch it, 
to raise it, and to perfectly heal and redeem it body and 
soul ; for these healings of the body, were they not also 
accompanied with blessed and hallowed influences upon 
the diseased mind, preparing it to receive the salvation of 
God, and symbolizing the power which Christ also had to 
immortally cure the sick and dying soul. 

I sought out the site of Capernaum at both of the 
places reputed to it by the learned, the Kahn Minyah of 
Dr. Robinson, and the Tell-ell-Hum of others. These sites 
lie at the distance of about an hour and a half riding from 
each other, on the north-western corner of the Lake. The 
Khan Minyah is a great black stone building in ruins, 
standing near the mouth of several rushing streams of 
clear and beautiful water, which feed a luxuriant plain, 
supposed by Robinson to be the original Gennesareth, 



CAPERNAUM. 225 

and the stream itself to be the famous fountain of Caper- 
naum, and the site of the ancient city, to be in the neigh- 
borhood of this old caravanserai. The ancient plain of 
Gennesareth is thus described by Josephus: 1 " The coun- 
try also that lies over against this lake hath the same 
name as Gennesareth. Its nature is wonderfuL as well 
as is its beauty. lis soil is so fruitful, that all sorts of 
trees can grow upon it ; and the inhabitants accordingly 
plant all sorts of trees there. For the temper of the air 
is so well mixed, that it agrees very well with these sev- 
eral sorts ; particularly the walnuts, which require the 
coldest air, flourish there in vast plenty. There are palm 
trees also, which grow best in hot air. Fig-trees also, and 
olives grow near them, which yet require an air that is 
more temperate. One may call this place the ambition of 
nature ; for it forces those plants that are naturally ene- 
mies to one another to agree together. It is a happy con- 
tention of the seasons, as if every one of them laid claim 
to this country. For it not only nourishes different sorts 
of autumnal fruit, beyond men's expectation ; but pre. 
serves them also a great while. It supplies men with the 
principal fruits, with grapes and figs, continually, during 
ten months of the year ; and the rest of the fruits as they 
become ripe together through the whole year. For besides 
the good temperature of the air. it is also watered from a 
most fertile fountain. The people of the country call it 
Capharnaum." This description even now corresponds 

1 Whiston's Jos. "Wars. Book 3d. 
11 



226 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

with the vale, ascending as it does from the gentle shores 
of the lake to the highlands, and continuing to roll upwards 
even to Mount Hermon, and thus harmonizing every 
character of temperature, its wild natural luxuriance being 
also heightened by the broad many-veined stream that 
hurtles like a various host through it. But continuing 
beyond, along the shores of the lake towards the north- 
east, becoming more rocky and precipitous as one ap- 
proaches the entrance point of the Jordan, almost ex- 
actly on the northern apex of the shore, there is a remark- 
able mound or low hill of ruins, evidently of a city of 
size and magnificence. 

This mound is called Tell -el-Hiim. These ruins, ac- 
cording to Dr. Robinson, cover an area of half a mile along 
the shore, and a quarter of a mile inland. They are of an 
elegant architecture, and some of the structures now 
poured along the earth and woven over by the luxuriant 
vegetation, must have stood stately and grand, command- 
ing the whole placid lake, stretched out before them. 
Many of the capitals of columns as I carefully examined 
them, were of elaborate flower and vine work, and had all 
the richness of the Corinthian style, with certain pecu- 
liarities of their own. There is but one edifice now stand- 
ing, a half-demolished tower, of massive square stones, to 
whose top I pushed my agile Arab horse without much 
exertion. This tower overlooks the peaceful sea, even 
to its southernmost extent, which apparently is barred 
and shut in by a long strait ridge of low mountains. 
Just in front of the tower, on the water's edge, one tall 



CAPERNAUM. 227 

raying palm tree leans over some piles of gray ruins. 
Here must have been once a great and splendid city, for 
upon every worn block of white marble around, is carved 
the deep rich proof of it. Was not this Capernaum? No 
city compared with Capernaum in extent and splendor in 
this region, or indeed out of Jerusalem in all the Holy 
Land. Although Dr. Robinson would answer that it was 
not, and his authority stands first in the topography of 
Palestine, yet arguments then arose, and have since 
strengthened themselves in my mind that those else unac- 
countable ruins were the true relics of Capernaum. Many 
travellers have noticed these elegant and extended ruins, 
and have given their testimony to the impression made 
upon them in favor of this site of the Lord's city. But how 
mighty the evidence that Capernaum has been " brought 
down to hell," when no man now can say certainly where 
even she once rose " exalted to heaven." From the old 
tower I took a last look of the sea of Galilee, which spread 
itself out beneath me, calmly gleaming like Truth in the 
full resting eye of God. Even now the dreaming Jews 
who live on its shores, believe that the Christ when he 
comes, will first appear here. They will not know that 
he has been here, and has here left footsteps, that thrill 
the world with the unspeakable truth that Deity was 
among us. 



%\n %toa fcto. 



THE TWO GARDENS. 

On opposite sides of Jerusalem must have bloomed the 
two gardens so tearfully inwoven with the close of our 
Lord : s life, — the Garden of Gethsernane, and the Garden 
of Joseph of Arimathea. Neither of them are to be with 
sureness located, but the present marked cluster of old 
olive-trees at the foot of the Mount of Olives, twisted as 
if by their own ages of pain, must have covered at least a 
portion of the shadowy refuge, where the Son of Man loved 
to steal, and where the last conflict of his soul was passed 
through. The brook Kidron no longer pours its full waves 
that once mingled with the groans of the Redeemer. The 
thick grove of olive, orange, terebinth and fig-trees that 
hid the sorrows of Christ, exists no longer, and the glaring 
sun looks down and explores the place of grief. But to 
visit this spot at the closing hours of day, the shadows 
will be found to be even now profound. The high and near 
overhanging wall of Jerusalem on one side, and the bulk 
of Olivet on the other, preserve the gloom so fitted for this 
place of woe. 

Rise again, ye faithful, loving children of nature, ye 



232 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

broad-armed, drooping, veiling trees, and hide the spot, 
consecrated for ever to Holy Sorrow and Divine Resigna- 
tion ! The last supper was finished. The last serene 
words of instruction, consolation and love had been listen- 
ed to by the disciples, and cemented with strong men's 
tears in their hearts for ever. They came down from the 
upper room, into the streets of the city. Night had begun 
to creep around the houses of Jerusalem, and the step-like, 
soaring mass of the Temple, was bathed in indistinct gloom. 
The silent company threaded the streets, past the palace 
of Pontius Pilate, shining it may be with the lights of a 
great feast, past the Porches of the Pool of Bethesda, out 
of the Gate of Flocks, down the steep gorge of Jehoshaphat, 
over the brook Kidron, and a short way up the Mount of 
Olives, " into a place which was named Gethsemane where 
was a garden." Here they stopped in silence and sorrow. 
They were not sorrowful from remorse, nor from fear, for 
their deeds had been those of light, not darkness, and they 
" were armed in the whole armor of God," but they were 
sorrowful because He who had led their feet hither, had 
said unto them, " Behold, a little time and ye shall not 
see me." 

The Redeemer's mortal work was soon to be comple- 
ted, the world had learned the immortal Truth in its 
permitted height, length, breadth, and it remained to 
finish the structure by the arch-stone of Death, to bind it 
together by the blood of a consummated Atonement. It 
remained for the Lamb of God to be slain for sin, 
to go down into the grave, to rise up from it victor over 



THE TWO GARDENS. 233 

the last enemy. On the trembling threshold of these events, 
knowing that their stupendous footsteps sounding through 
eternity were even now at hand, Jesus led forth hiu dis- 
ciples to the still garden, to keep the last night vigil on 
earth with him, as if he would draw around him even mor- 
tal strength, and love, and comfort, to lean upon in that 
dark hour. " And he said unto them, Pray that ye enter 
not into temptation. And he was withdrawn from them 
about a stone's cast, and kneeled down and prayed, saying, 
Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me : nev- 
ertheless, not my will but thine be done. And there ap- 
peared an angel unto him strengthening him. And being 
in an agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat was 
as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 
And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his 
disciples, be found them sleeping for sorrow, and said unto 
them, Why sleep ye 1 rise and pray, lest ye enter into temp- 
tation." We seek not to draw too near to that scene in 
the garden, nor to know the woe of our Lord at Gethsem- 
ane, nor the agony which so wrung nature, and drew in- 
stantly down an angel from the throne of God to alleviate 
it. The spiritual, we reverently believe, was the Saviour's 
true suffering, and the burden was not of His own ; and 
at Gethsemane, the spiritual struggle with the last power 
pf all temptation and human infirmity may have been, and 
the mightiness of that struggle uttered itself in that God« 
piercing prayer that the cup might be removed, but tie 
divine heart overcame, and the victory was proclaimed ix 
those mild but celestial words, " not my will, but thine fc« 
11* 



234 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

done." When those words were breathed, the salvation 
of the world was sealed. And the cloud and burden seemed 
thenceforth to have rolled off from the Saviour's heart ; 
calmly he rose to meet his murderers, and so full of God 
was even his human look, that the Roman soldiers who 
were about to lay hands on him, men unaccustomed to quail 
before the face of any living man, " went backward and fell 
to the ground." Christ was already more than conqueror of 
humanity, suffering, sin, death and hell. In the Judgment 
Hall, on the way to Calvary, and on the Cross, the inner 
spiritual victory won at Gethsemane, had restored the God, 
and sustained the man. We continue our lonely walk 
up the gorge of Jehoshaphat past Stephen's Gate, around 
the solitary, dwellingless north-eastern angle of the city 
wall, past the Cave of Jeremiah, till we come to the 
north-western rising hill ground without the city, north 
even of the Old Bezetha quarter and the ancient third 
wall, and we then cannot probably be very distant 
from that scene, hallowed with the overwhelming and 
eternal event which sealed our Redemption. And near 
by must have been also the garden of Joseph of Ari- 
mathea, where the body of our Lord having been " lifted 
up " in the sight of all Jerusalem from noon until 
even, and the usual indignities found unnecessary be- 
cause " he was dead already," and even then the lance 
thrust in the heart, was at length laid down "in the 
new-made tomb wherein never man before was laid" 
And Mary Magdalen and other women, whom the ter- 
rors of the scene of Calvary had driven to a distance. 



THE TWO GARDENS. 235 

now gathered near about the sepulchre of Joseph, saw the 
simple burial in the dim shades of evening, and noted 
where was the tomb. They then returned to the city to 
prepare spices, and thus to complete the hasty embalming 
of Joseph. And as the next day was the Sabbath, ' : they 
rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." 
What a Sabbath was that to the friends of Christ, when 
all was over, and the awful stillness of the tomb had come. 
The enemies of Christ had not forgotten his open words 
respecting his rising from the dead, even if his friends had 
done so. They " went and made the sepulchre sure, seal- 
ing the stone and setting a watch." During the still hours 
of that long Sabbath, the Roman sentinels stood before the 
sealed door of the sepulchre in the garden. Over against 
them, or slightly below them, lay the great city, rising from 
the surrounding hills like the boss of an antique buckler, 
" a city that is compact together," and the splendid Sab- 
batic solemnities of the Temple proceeded, and the senti- 
nels caught the sound of the trumpets, and saw the smoke 
of the morning, noon and evening sacrifices going up into 
the unstained heaven, as if no sin had been done against 
its majesty. The evening went softly down the hush of 
the sky, and the white moon rose pencilling the outlines 
of all the billowy hills around, touching the tall towers 
of Antonia and Hippicus, and rimming with silver the 
long battlemented wall that ran down even to the southern 
corner of Mount Sion, and still the Romans stood on their 
watch before the sealed sepulchre. Into the deep hours 
of that night they kept their watch. But suddenly, at 



236 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

midnight, " behold there was a great earthquake: for the 
angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and 
rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. His 
countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as 
snow. And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and be- 
came as dead men." When they recovered their senses, 
they ran precipitately into the city. And the women, who 
on the eve of the day of the crucifixion had marked the 
place of burial, having prepared their '* sweet spices," and 
waited for the heavy night to pass, " very early in the 
morning of the first day of the week," when the first 
faintest break of light announced the day, yea, not 
long after the headlong flight of the sentinels from their 
post, — they approached the sepulchre, bearing their spices, 
and saying among themselves, " who shall roll us the stone 
from the door of the sepulchre ? " " And they found the 
stone rolled away from the sepulchre, and they entered in, 
and found not the body of the Lord Jesus." Found it 
not ? There it had been laid down by the sweet love of 
Joseph of Arimathea ; there for two nights and a day, for 
thirty-six hours it had lain, and the sepulchre had been 
sealed with a seal and watched by Roman soldiers ! The 
tomb teas empty. The women hastened "with fear and 
great joy" to the disciples. The disciples having come in 
mingled excitement and unbelief, they enter and explore 
the sepulchre. They found the grave-clothes lying in it, 
" and the napkin that was about the head not lying with 
the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." 
There was no sign either of robbery or precipitation. 



THE TWO GARDENS. 23*7 

Then in the inner gloom of the sepulchre, lighted by the 
early morning beam, the glorious truth flashed for the first 
moment on the soul of the Apostle John, and it is said. ' ; he 
saw, and believed." He remembered those divine words, •• I 
shall rise again." The empty tomb was the simple unan- 
swerable evidence of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. It was also the evidence of the divine inherent 
power of the slumberer in death, that he rived the chain 
of corruption when he pleased. It was also the evidence 
and the blessed and joyful assurance of the Immortality 
of man. That resplendent truth dates from the coming 
of those heavy-hearted, spice-bearing, tenderly-loving wo- 
men very early in the morning to the sepulchre of Jesus 
and finding it empty. That early morning light was the 
first light that ever broke into the tomb of man. 

Yea, as in Adam all of us descend into the tomb, so in 
Christ we shall all ascend from it. In that sublime Co- 
rinthian chapter wherein death seems astonished, abolish- 
ed, annihilated, the resurrection of men from the grave is 
bound mysteriously, and yet in the highest sense philoso- 
phically, upon the resurrection of Christ. From Christ, 
is the thrilling seed-bursting energy of that broad resur- 
rection harvest. And even beyond this truth, our Lord's 
resurrection from the tomb was the throwing open of the 
golden portals of heaven's widest grace. — of his own lar- 
gest spiritual blessing on this world, — and the pouring 
abroad upon dying men through all ages the recreating, 
regenerating Spirit, his royal gift of eternal life, and thus 
is he, as he said, " the resurrection and the life." So pro- 



238 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT, 

foundry, so infinitely, has Christ joined himself to this our 
race, that we cannot live, nor die, nor rise, nor enter on 
the second life, without him. And still higher and more 
awful light shines about this truth. Our own resurrection 
bears us up only to the height of our own nature. Our 
Lord's resurrection bore him serenely as on clouds of hea- 
ven to the summit of the celestial Majesty, to reveal in 
heaven as the eternal Word, by spiritual manifestation, 
even as on earth he revealed in the flesh, the invisible God, 
— God in Christ forevermore. 



%\t JMtirg of % li|.le. 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 1 

There is reason to fear that the Bible is not so truly stu- 
died as of old. and thus the rich benefits which the Bible 
brings are diminished, in the midst of its far greater free- 
ness. Surely a hundred unstudied Bibles are of less value 
than one studied, even if it be chained to the stone pillar of 
a convent. We believe that our Fathers truly studied the 
Bible. The Puritan, both of England and of this country, 
bound the Bible as the old Hebrew did the law. upon his 
forehead, his arm, his heart ; he made it the great educa- 
tor of his children ; he drew from it his own grave wisdom, 
mental firmness, and spiritual grandeur ; it was to him 
'• the wisdom of Gi-od," and therefore it was his " medita- 
tion all the day ; " he rested his plough to explore it: he 
pondered it at the camp-fire on the eve of battle ; he was 
not ashamed of it in the hall of legislation, and on the high- 
est seat of magistracy. It may be, possibly, for so it has 
been said, that his study of the Bible was somewhat warp- 

1 An address delivered before a Bible Society, with some slight 
changes. 



242 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

ed, and that the parallelism of the tremendous exodus of 
ancient Israel through the sea and wilderness, with his 
own terrible religious tribulations, powerfully affected him, 
and drew him disproportionately to the study of the Old 
Testament ; so that he did not, enough for his own refresh- 
ing, bathe his weary and fighting spirit in the limpid wa- 
ters of the gospel. It may be also said, that he expressed 
his study of the Bible in many unpolished ways, and in a 
Canaanitish dialect; but these things only proved how deep 
the Bible was in his soul, that it was the source of his 
strength as of his peculiarities, that it was the profound 
ocean of his mental and spiritual contemplations, on which 
these straws swam, and the results of Puritanism in this 
land show the spiritual springs of its power, justifying the 
words of Carlyle : " Let all men honor Puritanism, since 
God has so honored it." And this study of the Bible, in 
our own country, was when Bibles were very few in the 
land. For one hundred and sixty years, during the reigns 
of eight English sovereigns, every Bible that was read in 
America came across the sea ; and Jonathan Edwards 
drew his History of Redemption from an imported Bible ; 
nor was it until the close of the eighteenth century, that 
freedom to print Bibles in America was obtained ; and thus 
" the Word of God "' was ' ; bound" to our Fathers, even 
until after our own civil bonds were burst. And in Eng- 
land, though we could hardly now imagine it. in an enlight- 
ened epoch of her history, which was then also our own, 
but just before Shakespere's genius rose and shone so be- 
nignly, Englishmen perished in the flames, for avowing 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 243 

that every one, laity as well as clergy, — that ;: every plough- 
boy in England" ought to have the Bible : and if so pain- 
ful a history would allow it, we could smile at the applica- 
tion made of Scripture itself by the persecutors of these 
devoted men, viz. : that through their giving of the Bible 
thus indiscriminately to all classes of men, '•'- the gospel 
pearl was cast abroad, to be trodden under foot by swine." 
It is difficult to believe that so learned, moderate, and in 
other respects singularly high-minded a man as Sir Thomas 
More, could, from his Chancellor's throne, with the wield- 
ed, imperious, crushing power of Henry VIII., have seut 
forth proclamations of fire and sword against the works 
and persons of those who, like Tyndale and Frith, were 
laboriously making a true translation of the Bible into 
good Saxon English, for the common people to read. 

Thus perhaps our Fathers loved the Bible more, and 
would have drawn their swords to have preserved it in all 
the institutions of the land, because it had come out to 
tli c in from under the furnace of the writ : - de heretico 
eoinburendo," and had been delivered into their hands 
wrapped as it were in napkins stained with martyrs' blood. 
It had to them an interest profoundly human, as well as 
mysteriously divine. This study of the Bible, — which 
after all is the true honor to be paid to it, — with the best 
energies, an awed personal conscience, and the interpene- 
tration of the whole being and life, is not perhaps so strong- 
ly characteristic of the present as of a former day, although 
Bibles are now as abundant as '-autumnal leaves," and 
every child can have one for a child's daily earnings. Yet 



244 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

never truly was there so much of Biblical science, so many 
commentators, so many critical students of the Bible, so 
many tasked brains bending over the sacred page, as now. 
This suggests a remark in respect to the true study of the 
Bible, — that as every age has its error as well as its virtue 
in its study of the Word of God, as the first age was too 
philosophical, as the middle age was too speculative, — the 
error of the present in the stud} 7 of the Bible may be. that 
it is not too greatly, but too exclusively critical. 

This does not at all disparage Biblical criticism and 
science. As belief itself is primarily a matter of the intel- 
lect, even as faith is of the heart, and as the truth purely 
comprehended can alone make our souls free, so Biblical 
science is the first of sciences, and has proved its claim to 
this regard by having left, as the result of its vast labors, 
the authority of Divine Revelation, humanly speaking, more 
deeply settled, — the mountains standing firmer around 
Jerusalem. And Biblical science has rightfully subsidiz- 
ed every other science, for it is itself as comprehensive as 
the manifestations of God. The science of Philology in 
especial, awakened to preternatural activity within the last 
half century, has wonderfully unlocked the Bible. The 
more skilful study of that noble old language which, amid 
thunderings and lightnings, the finger of God traced on 
the tables of stone, the language deemed worthy to sustain 
the mighty burden of the Law, with its unsoftened granitic 
strength, carrying us back to the pyramids, the elder hills 
and plains, the shepherds, the grandeur and emotiveness 
of a primitive world and nature, — this has brought us 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 245 

nearer the visible majesty of God in revelation. And all 
that keen apprehension which has penetrated more pro- 
foundly into the characteristics of the Oriental mind, 
through which the inspiration of God was poured, with its 
strongly original but rarely fully developed powers, its 
mixture of the meditative and the emotional, its capability 
of the sternest sacrifice and the most ecstatic feeling, — all 
that, indeed, has opened to us Oriental nature so diverse 
from our own, the Syrian sky with its magnificent uncloud- 
ed firmament, the sublime oceanic desert, " the tufted 
palm," those changeless manners, which are themselves the 
truest archaeology, the sacred sites whose simple rocks and 
slopes are sometimes the best commentaries, and all those 
subtle influences of nature or mind which originally im- 
pressed themselves, not essentially but formatively, upon 
Divine truth. — and in this connection that invincible ge- 
nius of research which has spelled out upon the great stone 
pages of Karnak, and the rising slabs of Nineveh, corres- 
ponding chapters to Holy Writ, — all this has sensibly an- 
imated our scriptural confidence. And in the physical 
sciences, when the great simple truth pronounced by Ga- 
lileo, that Scripture and physical fact could never be op- 
posed, is being every day elucidated and confirmed by a 
deeper science, the very rocky ribs of the planet being 
notched with the first verses of the Bible, and with the 
chafings of that Spirit-brooded ocean, — and when, for ex- 
ample, a world-grasping Humboldt, making his careful 
observations from the Sjteppes of Siberia to the valleys of 
the Andes, arrives, by scientific deduction wholly, at the 



246 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

scriptural statement of the absolute derivation of the hu- 
man race from one pair, then we see the value of every hu- 
man science in the study of the Bible. 

The patient learning, too, which has sifted down nearly 
all the discrepancies that must necessarily exist in a record 
descended through human transcription and translation, 
which has brought all these discrepancies into a defined 
space, so that we can hold them in our hand, and which 
has arrived at the most interesting conclusions, that these 
discrepancies are fewer than in contemporaneous classical 
writings, as in Homer, or Cicero, that the lacunas, or the 
breaks in the sense are almost none, and that no ^essen- 
tial truth originally inspired from heaven, has at all suffer- 
ed from the storms and wear of earth," — the learning, for 
instance, which led a Brettschneider, whose herculean 
strength went boldly to resettling or overturning the gos- 
pel of John, to admit that from the conflicts and results of 
the investigation, the foundations of that all-important 
portion of Scripture w T ere proved to be deeper bedded in 
evidence than those perhaps of any other part, — such learn- 
ing, while it may have made a trembling in many honest 
hearts, has nevertheless, in its fruits at least, given us cause 
for rejoicing. The silent, systematic thought also, which 
has brought out the unity of the theology from the appa- 
rent variety of the forms of Scripture, and shown the re- 
lations of every truth to the whole truth, this has done 
infinitely good service. And lastly, the philosophy, which 
has ever manfully met a philosophy of pretension, and has 
led minds wisely true to the future interests of the inspir- 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 247 

ed Word, through sore self-travail, to develope the essen- 
tial harmonies of philosophy and faith, and which in that 
Thought-land of Central Europe itself, we cannot but hope, 
is preparing in its slow white heat of mingled thought and 
suffering, some of the most polished pillars of the glorious 
temple of the triumph of the everlasting gospel, then we 
see the healthful progress of the age in Biblical science ; 
and herein theology itself is a grandly progressive science, 
the written Word resembling that other word, Nature, 
which though itself unchangeable, and its great features 
known to every child, is yet ever unfolding, and having 
inconceivably more to unfold, to the true student. 

But Biblical science alone, the habit of approaching 
the Bible purely for critical study — this, we believe, to be 
the injurious thing. The sad phenomenon which our age 
has sometimes presented, of men spending long lives and 
unbounded energies upon a venerable book in the dead 
languages, which garners up into itself the antique world, 
while they smiled at its authority to bind their conscien- 
ces, rule their faith, and judge them at last — here we con- 
ceive is the deep evil. That sharpened spirit, which, as 
some one has said, is ' ; continually coursing up and down 
the Bible," and never arrives at a restful faith, — that study 
of the Bible with a predetermined theory, which draws out 
the Divine Spirit from it, as a chemical process will search 
and expel the subtlest gas from a liquid substance, — that 
chilly criticism, which is as the night frost to the tender 
and spiritual vitality of the Word of Life, so that until 
lately, in the very land of criticism and learning, when a 



248 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

man rose up there, with the warm life of Christ in his heart, 
like Augustus Neander, he seemed to stand amid those 
philosophers, like that lone antarctic volcano which burns 
amid regions of snow, — such a study of the Bible, to the 
individual soul at least, appears to be worse than its neg- 
lect ; for when we reflect that even in so corrupt a trans- 
lation as the old Latin Vulgate, all the great truths 
of life and salvation are preserved ; then we may know 
that this consuming of strength upon " the letter " that 
" killeth," will not produce a religious reformation in an 
individual or a nation, and did not produce the reforma- 
tions of Luther, Zuingle, and Wickliflfe. 

The Bible, should it not be approached with more 
simplicity than any other book that exists, with more care 
of the mental condition, and above all, with a mind that 
already by faith and love, spiritually knows the Author, 
and which alone can make the dead letter leap into life 
and power ? The indwelling Spirit, in the soul of a re- 
generate man, knowing " the mind of the Spirit," can 
alone vivify and fully interpret its revelation. Yet 
even for an honest mental approach to the "Word of God, 
much is often needed to be done. It is related that an 
ancient Christian city of France was captured by Pagan 
hosts, and held by them for a long time. When the place 
was retaken by a Christian army, they were compelled to 
hew down with their swords and axes the brambles that 
had sprung up around the house of God in the heart of 
the city, ere they could enter in to worship. This bram- 
ble-girt temple is not unlike the moral condition of the 



THE STUDY OV THE BIBLE, 249 

Bible in the mind of some. They would be compelled to 
hew away the thorns of long neglect, disdain, ignorance, 
prejudice, false education, wrong mental habit, loyalty to 
religious brotherhood or fatherhood, party feeling, consti- 
tutional timidit}', passion, intellectual pride, before they 
could fairly come even to the door of the Word ' ; Who- 
soever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little 
child, he shall not enter therein." To examine the reve- 
lation of " the great God," the message of Divine love, the 
face of our Redeemer, with proud apathy, or that cold, 
keen curiosity merely with which we examine a human 
truth, without awe, emotion, earnest prayer, child-like 
humility, this were vain. The shoes of sufficiency must 
be laid off when we draw nigh to ask response from the 
oracles of God, 

And should not the Bible be studied also as a w/iok, 
with a reverent regard to the unity of the spirit, the 
essential oneness of divine truth ? In such study, no 
part would be overlooked ; the Old Testament would not 
be neglected as an effete inspiration, as a dry husk out of 
which the New had flowered, and thus had cast it off, but 
rather be meditated as the bud of the Gospel, as the mas- 
ter-key of the New Testament. The Bible is like one of 
those grand old cathedrals of Europe, where long ages 
were consumed in its building, where every builder built 
by himself, and according to his own inspiration, and 
where the greatest diversity of style was allowed ; and yet, 
when it was all finished, there was produced an over- 
whelming unity. Moses laid the deep foundations of the 
12 



250 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

law ; the Prophets let in the gorgeous windows, through 
which the light of the world's light streamed ; Paul and 
other Apostles reared the lofty towers of faith; James 
ornamented the mighty edifice within and without, with 
the beauteous after adornings and carvings of good works ; 
no builder was unnecessary, no portion is unessential ; 
and when the spiritual man walks the great aisles thereof, 
he perceives with awe, the one guiding spirit of the Lord 
God Almighty in every part, and the love of God in 
Christ illuming the whole. 

Christ, is this unity of the Bible, and of the Spirit. 
The manifold harmonies of Inspiration have but one aria, 
and this is as simple, and sublime, and infinitely profound, 
as the name — Christ. " They are they that testify of 
wze." He who loses Christ, in one book, chapter, sentence, 
of the whole Bible, has lost the thread of the way, the 
order of the chaos, the sun of the mystery, the essence of 
all. The Bible means nothing more, less, higher, under, 
Christ. In preparation and consummation, the entire 
Bible is, " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
himself." 

With this spiritual study of the Bible, as the breath- 
ing every where of the love and will of God in Jesus Christ 
to a sin-alienated and perishing world, as the testi- 
mony and testament of a dying, risen, Divine Saviour, as 
the great guide book of our salvation, and with something 
of the renewed zeal of the old Puritan, mingled with a 
deeper skill, and perhaps a more unfettered love and joy 
in the spiritual liberty of Christ, than his, how would such 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 251 

a study of the Word revive our land. It would be a 
study without Bibliolatry, without any Alcoranic idea of 
resident divinity in the Book, and yet with faith in 
its divine infallibility and sufficiency, as if, in the words 
of Milton, " The Holy Spirit needed no supplement." 
Especially would it be a study without wavering doubt in 
the eternal nature of the Word of God There would be 
no mere weak theorizing upon a revelation once true, but 
now outgrown, and superseded. For grant such truths as 
the following to be once divinely inspired, and they are 
true forever, — " For God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life " — " Christ 
Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness 
for the remission of sins that are past, through the for- 
bearance of God ; to declare, I say, at this time his right- 
eousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him 
which believeth in Jesus." And philosophically, a truth, 
a spiritual truth, a divine truth, never dies. Why should 
this be sometimes conceded in respect to the truth of 
Immortality " brought to light in the gospel," and not al- 
ways equally conceded in respect to the peculiar truths of 
that same gospel, where nothing in those truths them- 
selves involve limitation ? Why is the eternal nature of 
the inspired truth that " God is love " affirmed, and not 
also the eternal nature of the inseparably linked truth, 
that " in this was manifested the love of God toward us, 
because that God sent his only begotten Son into the 



252 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, 
not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his 
Son to be the propitiation for our sins % " Nineteen hun- 
dred years are not enough to sap even a moral, and more 
a spiritual truth. The mountains dissolve in its presence. 
The earth and heaven pass like shadows before it. It is 
" the everlasting gospel." The generations who succeed 
us will differ no more essentially from us than we differ 
from them to whom the gospel was first published, who 
flourished like the grass when Christ stood on the earth. 
Men will continue to be imperfect, erring, sinful like us, 
and therefore proper subjects of the claims, illuminations 
and healings of the gospel. No man will ever arise to 
the last man, who will not need the help of a spiritual and 
divine Eedeemer. And when will the gospel cease to 
produce the same universal impress of the restored image 
of God in the human soul ? When will its love be found 
vain % When will its consolations not be needed % When 
will its words be less than solemn ? When will its reve- 
lation of c: things to come," be surpassed ? When will 
truth be discovered more philosophically consonant with 
the profoundest elements and ultimate truths of our na- 
ture and consciousness, than the " truth as it is in Jesus ? " 
When will the example and life of Jesus Christ ever be 
wholly attained and followed by man 1 When will another 
way unto God be found than " the way, the truth, and the 
life," which the Gospel manifests? The unsearchable 
riches of Christ have been just discovered, and the pro- 
gress, newness, and deepening advance is to be in them, 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 253 

not from them, even as the sparkling firmament was the 
same to Adam as it is to ourselves, but Thought has now 
penetrated the riches of those depths, and laid open their 
internal glory, wisdom, wonder. We make no true pro- 
gress in the science of astronomy "by turning away from 
the heavens and studying only their reflected light. Pro- 
gress in theology is as certain as in science, but it is in 
the infinite development of divine truth, not in its change 
or annihilation. In God, primarily, we look for advance 
in spiritual things, yet working in and through man, to 
great onward movements and conclusions, even as the 
seasons in the physical world of God tend to one uni- 
versal Spring. Thus Faith does not itself change, 
while its conquests and empires indefinitely and infinitely 
enlarge, for the infinite power and Spirit of God are 
ever in the Faith. Such a study of the Bible, spirit- 
ual, believing, and filled with its everlasting truth, hope, 
authority, and divine Spirit, would produce in this land, 
with the blessing of God, a new moral and religious refor- 
mation, — -yes, in this land of the reformed religion. By 
this renewed study of the Gospel of Christ, the very vices, 
moral and spiritual, which have been aggravated by the 
first reaction of Christianity upon the resisting heart of 
the nation, would, by its second fresh and vigorous appli- 
cation, be overcome. By this clearer study of divine truth, 
all fanaticism, — and there are ponderous clouds hang- 
ing over this country, — would be most swiftly dispelled ; 
and a rational, sublime, love-born Christianity would win 
its way through the whole land. Love, the heart of Christ, 



254 NOTES OF A THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 

the eternal idea of the Gospel, and as yet but feebly penetra- 
ted, even in this land where the great writer on the Affec- 
tions fairly led the way to its unfolding, in its inconceivable 
expansion, its universal application to all the interests of 
humanity melting into the heart of this nation, would per- 
vade its whole social fabric, vitalize its moral tone, dissolve 
the cruel anomalous relics of unchristian sentiment, correct 
public opinion, perfect all righteousness among men, and 
shed abroad the most diffusive, warming, lustrous and beau- 
tiful type of Christian civilization, not separating the beau- 
tiful from the right, nor the brilliant from the just, nor the 
great from the morally good, but like the hours wreathing 
about Guido's chariot of the sun, every honor, power and 
grace would derive light from the central face of Truth. 
The vast practical element of the gospel would be drawn 
out, and the wealth which God has given so easily to this 
nation, which He has piled in mountains and poured in 
rivers, would run as sparklingly and naturally in the wide 
channels of enlightened benevolence ; and the benevolence 
of this land once moved by a true love of Christ, would 
reflect something of the grandeur and expansiveness of 
our dominions, even as Judea gave feelingly, and Greece 
gracefully to Christ, but Rome imperially. The heart of 
this country has not yet swelled with the first pulsation of 
the generosity of the Cross. Government would begin to 
feel this lifting ocean-tide of a pervading, popular re- 
evangelization ; and in great lines of State policy the 
spirit and eternal precepts of Jesus, levelling all na- 
tional wrongs, and proclaiming the higher principles of 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 255 

righteousness, freedom, humanity, would as broadly shine, 
as if the only law book used in every State Capitol, and 
in the Capitol on the banks of the river murmuring by 
the tomb of Washington, were the Bible, and America at 
last truly Christianized, — then the world. Then also the 
hope, never to be utterly quenched out of the best minds, 
of the Unity of the Christian Church, would be approxi- 
mately realized in this thronging holy Delos of a Bible 
Faith, wherein the arms of battling tribes and sects 
would be laid down, and the embrace of a common brother- 
hood given. Then also, perhaps, we would be permitted 
to see, in secondary things, a somewhat freer form of the 
Christian, the man to whom are " all things " in Christ, 
who would not fear to take possession of his rich heritage 
of Nature, and to draw deeply contented enlargement from 
the contemplation of her lovely and magnificent forms ; 
and who, like the late lamented Edwards, that harbinger 
soul, could be both holy and learned, could thrill with the 
beauty of God's sunsets and' frost-glories while studying 
His Word, could look with pure admiration upon a noble 
statue or painting, and read Homer or Wordsworth even 
with a sanctified mind. Then we should see a Christian- 
ity that dwarfed and repressed no healthful, manful, God- 
created energy, no free, large, earnest reason, no high, 
delicate, generous emotion, and which would have vigor to 
control and lead, instead of shrinking wounded from the 
intellectual demands of an active, thoughtful, scientific 
age. And united with this intelligent, humane, hopeful 
Christianity, we should behold a sublimer spirituality, a 



256 NOTES OF A 'HIEOLoOlCAL STUDENT. 

holiness born from above, and u full of the Holy G-kost," 
in which men would reverently recognize those " kings 
unto God," whose crown is continual communion with 
Him. 

So I have seen in marvellous Switzerland, upon a 
still and glorious summer morning, above the heavy and 
clinging clouds of earth, above the steely glacier, above the 
common soar of the strong eagle, as if above the earth or 
a mortal thought, hanging in the deep sea-like vault of 
heaven, etherial and serene, the mountain's dome of daz- 
zling white, so white that an angel wafted from heaven 
might alight upon it, and not stain his robe, the purer 
airs of heaven circle around it, and it is touched by all the 
exquisite fires of golden light, — silent is it, as if its front 
had clomb to Grod and there was awed, except when at 
times, with a deepening roar, louder and louder, like the 
brazen wheels of Michael's chariot or the beginning of the 
judgment trump, the avalanche thundered ; and yet as if 
Awe loved to glide down from this bald and dreadful 
height, and to meet the loveliness of lower things, at the 
base of the great mountain the little vine-clad cottages of 
manly health and vigor nestled, the sunny rivers ran, 
along whose banks the flocks were feeding, and the hum- 
ble meadows laughed, watered by those summits which 
held communion with the sky. 



THE END. 



PARKYNS' ADVENTURES IN ABYSSINIA 



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LIFE IN ABYSSINIA, 

Being- the Personal Narrative of an Englishman, a long resident in that 

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the survey : — 

1. A Journey from Indianola, Texas, to El Paso del Norte. 

2. A Journey to the Copper Mines in the Rocky Mountains, near the Gila, and a resi- 
dence thereof four months. 

3. A Journey to Arispe in Sonora. 

4. A Journey along the boundary line south of the Gila, and thence through another 
part of Sonora to Guaynias, on the Gulf of California. 

5. A Voyage down the Gulf of California to Mazatlan and Acapulco, and thcnco to San 
Francisco. 

C. Various Journeys in the Interior of California. 

7. A Journey from San Diego, California, by way of the Gila, and through tho States of 
Sonora and Chihuahua to El Paso. 

8. A Journey from El Paso through the States of Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Coa- 
huila. and Tamaulipas, to Camargo, on the Lower Rio Grande, and thence through tho South- 
western part of Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. 

List of the larger Tinted Illustrations. 

Volume I. — Snow Storm on Delaware Creek, near the Pecos, Texas. — 2. Guadalupe Pass 
on Cooke's Road, Sierra Madre, Sonora. — 3. Valley Leading to Santa Cruz, Sonora. — i. 
City of Hermosillo, Sonora. — 5. City of Mazatlan, Pacific Coast. — 6. City of Acapulco, 
Pacific Coast. 

Volume II. — Ruins at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. — 2. Geysers, Pluton River, California. — 
3. Geysers, Pluton River, California. — i. Napa Valley from the obsidian Hills, Califor- 
nia. — 5. Ascent to the Quicksilver Mine, New Almaden. — 6. View on the River Gila, 
Big Horn Mountain. — 7. Casas Grande?, River Gila. — 8. Ruins at Casas Grandes, Chi- 
huahua. — 0. Organ Mountains, New Mexico. — 10. Fort Yuma, Junction of the Gila and 
Colorado Rivers. 

This work will throw a flood of light on the distant and hitherto unknown countries 
which are now attracting so much attention. The vast mineral wealth of the frontier 
States (if Mexico embraced in these explorations — the new treaty with Mexico, made by the 
American Minister, General Gadsden, for the puKchaseof a large portion of this territory — 
the contemplated railroad through it, and the advantages offered for mining and agricul- 
tural purposes in our newly acquired territories, as well as those contiguous, render thi* 
work at this time one of tho most important of the publications of the day. 



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A BOOK FOR EVEEY CHRISTIAN" FAMILY. 



The Hearth-Stone ; 

THOUGHTS UPON HOME LIFE IN OUR CITIES. 

BY 

SAMUEL OSGOOD, 

Author of " Studies in Christian Biography," " God with Men," etc. 

1 vol. 12mo. cloth. Price SI. 



CRITICISMS OF THE PRESS. 

"This is a volume of eloquent and impressive essays on the domestic relations and the 
religious duties of the household. Mr. Osgood writes on these interesting themes in the 
most charming and animated style, winning the reader's judgment rather than coercing 
it to the author's conclusions. The predominant sentiments in the book are purity, sin- 
cerity, and love. A more delightful volume has rarely been published, and we trust it will 
have a wide circulation, for its influence must be salutary upon both old and young." — Com- 
mercial Advertiser. 

" The ' Hearth-Stone 1 is the symbol of all those delightful truths which Mr. Osgood 
here connects with it. In a free and graceful style, varying from deep solemnity to the most 
genial and lively tone, as befits his range of subjects, he gives attention to wise thoughts on 
holy things, and homely truths. His volume will find many warm hearts to which it will 
address itself.'' — Christian Examiner. 

"The author of this volume passes through a large circle of subjects, all of them con- 
nected with domestic life as it exists in large towns. The ties of relationship — the female 
character as developed in the true province and empire of woman, domestic life, the edu- 
cation of children, and the training them to habits of reverence— the treatment of those 
of our households whose lot in life is humbler than ours— the cultivation of a contented 
mind — the habitual practice of devotion — these and various kindred topics furnish ample 
matter for touching reflections and wholesome counsels. The spirit of the book is fervently 
religious, and though no special pains are taken to avoid topics on which religion ■> men 
differ, it 'breathes a kindly spirit above the reach of sect or party.' The author is now 
numbered among the popular preachers of the metropolis, and those who have listened 
to his spoken, will not be disappointed with his written, eloquence." — Evening Post. 

" A household book, treating of the domestic relations, the deportment, affections, and 
• duties which belong to the well ordered Christian family. Manly advice and good sense 
are exhibited in an earnest and affectionate tone, and not without tenderness and truthful 
sentiment; while withal a Christian view is taken of the serious responsibility which attends 
the performance of the duties of husband and wife, parent and child, sister and brother. 
"We are particularly pleased with the real practical wisdom, combined with the knowledge 
of human nature, which renders this volume deserving of careful study by those who de- 
sire to make their homes happy." — New York Churchman. 



D. APPLETON $ CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

OAPT. FOOTE'S NEW AND HIGHLY INTERESTING WORK. 



Africa and the American Flag. 

BY COMMANDER ANDREW H. FOOTE, 

Lieut. Commanding U. 8. Brig " Perry" on the Coast of Africa, 

A. D. 1850-51. 

ILLUSTRATED WITH HANDSOMELY TINTED LITHOGRAPHIC PLATES. 

One Volume, 12mo. 3*79 pages. Price $1 50. 



CONTENTS. 
Discoveries by French arid Portuguese along the Coast — Slave Trade Systematized 
— " Horrors of the Middle Passage 1 ' — African Nations — Formation of the American 
Colonization Society — Disposal of Recaptured Slaves by the American Government — 
The Commonwealth of Liberia— Thos. H. Buchanan— Use of the American Flag in 
the Slave Trade — Slavers at Bassa — Expedition against them — Conflict — Death of King 
Bentrerai — Expedition of Buchanan against Gaytinuba — Death of Buchanan — His 
Character — Condition of Liberia as a Nation — Aspect of Liberia-to a Visitor — Condition 
of the People compared with that of their race in the United States — Schools — Condi- 
tion of Slaves on board of the Slave Vessels — Capture of the Slave Barque Pons — Affair 
with the Natives near Palmas — Cruise of the " Perry'"' — Abuse of the American Flag — 
An Arrangement made with the British Commodore for the Joint Cruising of the 
" Perry" and Steamer "Cyclops" — Capture of the American Slave Ship "Martha" — 
Claims to Brazilian Nationality — Letters found on board illustrative of the Slave Trade 
— St. Helena — Appearance of the Island — Island of Madeira — Interference of the British 
Consul with the " Louisa Benton" — Necessity of Squadrons for Protection of Com- 
merce and Citizens Abroad. 

This very interesting volume makes us acquainted with very im- 
portant facts connected with the efforts of the American Government 
to suppress the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. Lieut. Foote not 
only places before us a record of what occurred whilst he was in com- 
mand of the U. S. Brig " Perry," but gives us an account of the History 
and Government of the African Race — their Manners and Customs, an 
Account of the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Liberia, its 
Condition, Prospects, &c, <fcc. It abounds with eveiy variety of inci- 
dent and adventure, and will, from the very novelty of the subject, 
have a wide sale. In order that some idea may be formed of the cha- 
racter of the work, a selection from the table of contents is prefixed. 



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Important Philosophical Works. 

i. 

PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., 

Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Edinburgh University. Arranged 
and edited by O. W. WIGHT, Translator of Cousin's "History oi 
Modern Philosophy." One vol. Svo., pp. 530, well printed. $1 00. 

"Sir William Hamilton has attained to the very highest distinction as a philosopher, 
and in some respects he is decidedly superior to any of his illustrious predecessors — 
Keid, Stuart, or Brown. With a remarkable power of analysis and discrimination, he 
ho combines great decision and elegance of style, and a degree of erudition that is 
almost without a parallel." — Edinburgh Beview. 



II. 

COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

By M. VICTOR COUSIN. Translated by 0. W. Wight. Two volumes 
8vo., well printed. Price $3. 



III. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 

From the French of VICTOR COUSIN Translated, with notes, by J. 
C. Daniel. One neat vol. 12mo. Price 63 cents. 



IV. 

LECTURES ON THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND 

THE GOOD. 
By VICTOR COUSIN. Translated by 0. W. Wight. One neat vol. Svo. 

"M. Cousin is the greatest philosopher of France."— Sir William Hamilton. 

" A writer, whose pointed periods have touched the chords of modern society, and 
thrilled through the minds of thousands in almost every quarter of the civilized world." 
^Edinburgh Review. 



V. 

THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE. 

Freely Translated and Condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. Two 

volumes 8vo. pp. 510, 577, well printed. Price $4. 



D. APPLETON & 00:S PUBLICATIONS. 



f uvular % limit. 

The Chemistry of Common Life. 

By JAMES F. W. JOHNSTON, M.A., F.R.SS. L. & K, &c. 

Author of '■ Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology," a 
" Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology," &c. 



A D V E RTIS E ME NT. 

The common life of man is full of wonders, Chemical and Physiological. Most of us pass 
through this life without seeing or being sensible of them, though every day our existence and 
our comforts ought to recall them to our minds. One main cause of this is, that our schools 
tell us nothing about them — do not teach those parts of modern learning which would tit us 
for seeing them. What most concerns the things that daily occupy our attention and cares, 
are in early life almost sedulously kept from our knowledge. Those who would learn any 
thing regarding them, must subsequently teach themselves through the help of the press: 
hence the necessity for a Popular Chemical Literature. 

It is with a view to meet this want of the Public, and at the same time to supply a Manual 
for the Schools, that the present work has been projected. It treats, in what appears to be 
their natural order, r.f the air we breathe and the water we drink, in their relations to 
human life and health — the soil we cultivate and the plant we rear, as the sources 
from which the chief sustenance of all life is obtained — the bread we eat and the beef we 
cook, as the representatives of the two grand divisions of human food— the beverages we 
infuse, from which so much of the comfort of modern life, both savage and civilized, is de- 
rived— the sweets we extract, the history of Which presents so striking an illustration of 
the economical value of chemical science— the liquors we ferment, so different from the 
sweets in their action on the system, and yet so closely connected with them in chemical 
history — the narcotics we indulge ix. as presenting us with an aspect of the human con- 
stitution which, both chemically and physiologically, is more mysterious and wonderful than 
any other we are acquainted with- the odouks we enjoy and the smells we dislike; the 
former because, of the beautiful illustration it presents of the recent progress of organic 
chemistry in its relations to comforts of common life, and the latter because of its intimate 
connection with our most important sanitary arrangements— what we breathe for and 
why we digest, as functions of ihe body at once the most important to life, and the most 
purely chemical in their nature— the body we cherish, as presenting many striking phe- 
nomena, and performing many interesting chemical functions not touched upon in the dis- 
cussion of the preceding topics— and lastly, the circulation of matter, as exhibiting in 
one view the end, purpose and method of all the changes in the natural body, in organic 
nature, and in the mineral kingdom, which are connected with and determine the existence 

It has been the object of the Author in this Work to exhibit the present condition of 
chemical knowledge and of matured scientific opinion upon the subjects to which it is devo- 
ted. The reader will not be surprised, therefore, should he find in it some things which 
differ from what is to be found in other popular works already in his hands or on the shelves 
of his library. , ,.,„„. 

The Work is being published in 5 or 6 Numbers, price 25 cents each, in the following 
order, forming 1 vol. 12mo. of about 400 pages. 



1. The AIR we Breathe and 

2. The WATER we Drink. 

3- The SOIL we Cultivate and 

4. The PLANT we Rear. 

5. The BREAD we Eat and 

6. The BEEE we Cook- 

7. The BEVERAGES we Infuse- 



10. The NARCOTICS we Indulge in. 

11. The ODOURS we Enjoy and 

12. The SMELLS we Dislike. 

13. What we BREATHE and BREATHE' 
FOR, and 

14. What, How, and Why we DIGEST- 

15. The BODY we Cherish, and 



8. The SWEETS we Extract.* A \J16. The CIRCULATION of MATTER, 

9. The LIQU JPcr ifrermenfr- i a Recapitulation. 



D. APPLE-TON A COMPANTB PUBLICATIONS. 



The Great Work on Russia. 

Fifth Edition now ready. 



RUSSIA AS IT IS. 

By Count A. de G-urowski. 

One neat volume 12mo., pp. 328, well printed. Price $1, cloth. 

STENTS. — Preface. — Introduction. — Czarism : its historical origin — The 
Czar Nicholas. — The Organization of the Government. — The Army ami 
Navy. — The Nobility. — The Clergy. — The Bourgeoisie — The Cossacks. - 
The Real People, the Peasantry. — The Rights of Aliens and Strangers. 
— The Commoner. — Emancipation. — Manifest Destiny. — Appendix. — 
The Amazons. — The Fourteen Classes of the Russian Public Service ; or, 
the Tschins. — The Political Testament of Peter the Great. — Extract 
from an Old Chronicle. 



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accurate notion of the internal condition of Russia, the nature and extent other resources, 
and the practical influence of her institutions, will here find better materials for his pur- 
pose than in any single volume now extant." — N. Y. Tribune. 

"This is a powerfully-written book, and will prove of vast service to every one who 
desires to comprehend the real nature and bearings of the great contest in which Russia is 
now engaged." — N. Y. Courier. 

" It is original in its conclusions; it is striking in its revelations. Numerous as are the 
volumes thai have been written about Russia, we really hitherto have known little of that 
immense territory — of that numerous people. Count Gurowski's work sheds a light which 
at .this time is most welcome and satisfactory." — N. Y. Times. 

"The book is well written, and as might be expected in a work by a writer so unu- 
sually conversant with all sides of Russian affairs, it contains so much important information 
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of the Russian people, and the construction of their political society. The institutions of 
Russia are presented as they exist in reality, and as they are determined by existing and 
obligatory laws." — N. Y. Herald. 

" A hasty glance over this handsome volume has satisfied us that it is one worthy oi 
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ing accounts of the various classes among the Russian people, their condition and aspi- 
rations."— X. Y. Sun. 

"This is a volume that can hardly fail to attract very general attention, and command f. 
wide sale in view of the present juncture of European affairs, and the prominent part 
therein which Russia is to play. 1 ' — Utica Gazette. 

" A timely book. It will be found all that it professes to be, though some may be start 
led at some of its conclusions." — Boaton Atlas. 

"This is one of the best of all the books caused by the present excitement in relation to 
Russia. It is a very able publication — one that will do much to destroy the general belief 
In the infallibility orRussia. The writer shows himself master of his subject, and treats of 
the internal condition of Russia, her institutions and customs, society, laws, &c, in an an- 

lightened and scholarly manner." — City Item. 



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By THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D., Late Regius Professor of Modern His- 
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II. 
HISTORY OF FRANCE, 

FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
By M. MICHELET, Professor a la Faculte des Lettres, Professor a 
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FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
By FREDERICK KOHLRAUSCH. Translated from the last German 
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By F. GUIZOT. Translated by W. Hazlitt. 4 vols. 12mo. $3 50. 



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